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The  Place  of  the 
Hypothesis  in  Logic 


l By 

ESTHER  CRANE 


.  PHILOSOPHIC  STUDIES 

ISSUED  UNDER  THE  DIRECTION  OF  THE  DEPARTMENT  OF 
PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO 

NUMBER  10 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 
CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS 

THE  BAKER  &  TA  YLOR  COMPANY.  New  York 
THE  CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS.  London 
THE  MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA.ToktJO,  Osaka,  Kuoto,  Fukuoka,  Sendai 
THE  MISSION  BOOK  COMPANY,  Shanghai 


The  Department  of  Philosophy  of  the  University  of  Chicago  issues 
a  series  of  monographs  in  philosophy,  including  ethics,  logic  and  meta¬ 
physics,  aesthetics,  and  the  history  of  philosophy.  The  successive  mono¬ 
graphs  are  numbered  consecutively  with  a  view  to  their  subsequent 
publication  in  volumes.  These  studies  are  similar  to  the  series  of 
Contributions  to  Philosophy ,  but  do  not  contain  psychological  papers  or 
reprints  of  articles  previously  published. 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS 

IN  LOGIC 


' 


' 


- 


. 


. 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS 

IN  LOGIC 


BY 

ESTHER  CRANE 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 
CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS 


Copyright  1923  By 
The  University  of  Chicago 


All  Rights  Reserved 


Published  April  1923 


Composed  and  Printed  By 
The  University  of  Chicago  Press 
Chicago,  Illinois,  U.S.A. 


PREFATORY  NOTE 


For  counsel  and  criticism  in  this  study  I  desire  to  acknowledge  my 
indebtedness  to  Professor  James  Hayden  Tufts  and  Professor  Addison 
Webster  Moore. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Introduction  .  . i 

Introductory  examples  of  certain  logicians’  definite  rejection  of 
the  hypothesis  from  their  logical  systems.  Statement  of  aim  of 
thesis. 

CHAPTER 

I.  Two  Different  Motives  for  the  Rejection  of  the  Hypothesis  3 

Some  logicians  reject  hypotheses  because  they  desire  knowledge 
which  is  perfectly  objective,  derived  from  things  themselves  .  3 

Bacon  as  a  typical  logician  of  this  class . 4 

Other  logicians  reject  hypotheses  because  they  desire  knowledge 
which  has  absolute  necessity  and  universality  ....  6 

Descartes  as  a  typical  logician  of  this  class . 6 

II.  Those  Logicians  Who  Reject  Hypotheses  Because  They  Wish 
to  Derive  Their  Knowledge  Directly  from  Things  .  .  .  13 

Locke  avoids  the  preconceptions  which  might  be  introduced  by 
the  “mind”  by  making  that  “mind”  entirely  passive,  therefore 

rejecting  hypotheses . 13 

Difficulties  of  this  view . 14 

Mill's  fear  of  the  “mind”  is  merely  intermittent  ....  16 

His  three  views  concerning  hypotheses . 17 

III.  Those  Logicians  Who  Reject  Hypotheses  Because  They  Desire 
a  Complete  and  Finished  System  of  Thought  Which  Proceeds 
by  Strict  Necessity . 26 

Kant  contends  that  completely  logical  thinking  must  possess  at 

every  step  universality  and  necessity . 27 

Because  they  lack  universality  and  necessity  he  rejects  hypotheses 
from  completely  logical  thinking  though  he  states  that  they 
are  indispensable  to  the  solution  of  specific  problems.  .  .  28 

Hegel  contends  that  the  rational  order  is  already  completely 

realized . 31 

Effect  on  evolution  of  the  categories.  Effect  on  hypotheses  .  33 

Bosanquet  presents  three  characteristics  of  inference,  which  neces¬ 
sitate  the  exclusion  of  hypotheses  as  “mere  accidents  of  in¬ 
ference.”  These  characteristics  limit  inference  to  the  sys¬ 
tematization  of  truth  already  known . 36 

Holt  contends  that  not  only  logic  but  also  science  is  a  complete 

deductive  system . 4 2 

vii 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

Critical  examination  of  assertion  that  scientists  do  not  use 
hypotheses.  Comparison  of  Holt  with  idealists  just  discussed. 
Analysis  of  Holt’s  example  of  classification . 42 

IV.  Conclusion . 50 

The  positive  characteristics  of  a  logic  which  can  find  a  place  for 
hypotheses: 

A  close  connection  between  thought  and  things  ....  50 
A  close  connection  between  thinking  and  other  activities  .  .  55 
Recognition  of  the  ambiguous  character  of  immediate  experience.  57 


INTRODUCTION 


We  take  hypotheses  so  much  as  a  matter  of  course  in  our  scientific 
and  practical  thought  that  it  comes  as  a  shock  to  us  to  realize  that 
traditional  logic  has  always  had  great  difficulty  with  them.  There  are 
some  logicians  who  recognize  the  usefulness  of  hypotheses,  and  who 
give  a  fair  scientific  account  of  procedure  by  hypothesis,  but  who  become 
involved  in  fundamental  contradictions  when  they  introduce  hypotheses, 
into  their  systems.  There  are  other  logicians  who  assert  boldly  that 
the  hypothesis  has  no  place  at  all  in  completely  logical  thought.  Such 
is  the  opinion  of  Bacon,  the  supposed  father  of  English  empiricism,  who 
rejects  those  hypotheses  which  the  mind  adds  to  the  facts,  condemns 
that  method  of  investigation  which  “from  the  very  beginning  lays  down 
some  abstract  useless  generalities,”  and  praises  the  method  “which  is 
by  due  means  elicited  from  things”  and  which  “rises  step  by  step  to 
those  things  which  are  truly  in  Nature  more  noscible”  instead  of  attempt¬ 
ing  to  omit  some  of  the  necessary  steps  by  the  use  of  guessing  hypotheses.1 
There  are  certain  passages  where  Mill  asserts  unequivocally  that  the 
hypothesis  should  not  be  admitted  to  investigations,  using  such  expres¬ 
sions  as:  “uniformities  ascertained  by  a  perfect  induction  without  any 
mixture  of  hypothesis,”  “we  may  rationally,  and  without  hypothesis, 
conclude,”  and  “there  is  thus,  in  Laplace’s  theory,  nothing,  strictly 
speaking,  hypothetical;  it  is  an  example  of  legitimate  reasoning.”2 
Bosanquet,  the  objective  idealist,  is  another  logician  who  rejects  the 
hypothesis  as  necessary  to  true  inference,  first  asserting  “the  essential 
identity  of  Induction  with  procedure  by  Hypothesis,”3  and  then  stating 
that  “Induction  is  not  a  species  of  inference,”  but  instead  “a  transient 
and  external  characteristic  of  inference.”4  Holt,  the  exponent  of  neo¬ 
realism,  also  objects  to  hypotheses  because  they  are  “deliberately  added 
to  the  observed  facts,”  whereas  truth  can  be  known  only  to  one  who  is 
“a  mere  impartial  witness  of  the  events,”  and  also  because  they  cannot 
help  a  science  which  is  seeking  laws  that  “are  not  hypothecated  or 
constructed  To  fit’  the  facts;  they  are  found  in  the  facts.”5 

1  Bacon,  Novum  Organon,  Book  I,  secs.  22-26. 

2  Mill,  A  System  of  Logic,  pp.  359-60. 

3  Bosanquet,  Logic ,  II,  156.  4  Ibid.,  p.  171. 

s  Holt,  1'he  Concept  of  Consciousness,  p.  129. 


2 


INTRODUCTION 


In  the  following  detailed  discussion  of  some  of  the  important  logicians 
who  have  failed  to  find  a  place  for  the  hypothesis  in  their  systems  I  hope 
to  show  not  only  that  their  reasons  for  rejecting  it  were  not  adequate, 
but  also  that  they  could  not  possibly  proceed  without  these  hypotheses, 
and  were  forced  either  to  use  them  openly  even  though  they  were  unable 
to  reconcile  them  with  their  systems,  or  to  introduce  them  surreptitiously 
under  another  name,  or  else,  in  the  interests  of  consistency,  to  abandon 
the  project  of  giving  an  account  of  thinking  which  discovers  anything 
or  arrives  at  any  conclusions,  and  to  content  themselves  with  an  account 
of  the  process  of  systematizing  and  arranging  those  conclusions  after 
they  have  been  discovered.  In  addition  I  hope  to  show  what  character¬ 
istics  a  logic  must  have  if  it  is  to  escape  these  difficulties  and  to  give  a 
consistent  account  of  the  place  of  the  hypothesis  within  such  a  system. 


CHAPTER  I 


TWO  DIFFERENT  MOTIVES  FOR  THE  REJECTION 

OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS 

There  is  one  consideration  which  influences  practically  all  of  the 
logicians  who  do  not  give  the  hypothesis  a  real  place  in  their  logic,  and 
that  is  the  fact  that  they  make  a  complete  separation  between  the 
Knower  and  the  Known,  and  then  consider  that  the  hypothesis  belongs 
wholly  to  the  Knower,  is  wholly  subjective.  But  some  logicians  object 
to  this  subjectivity  because  it  is  the  source  of  prejudice  and  error,  and 
because  it  tempts  the  thinker  to  accept  the  fancies  and  theories  of  his 
own  mind  instead  of  examining  carefully  the  objective  facts,  to  follow 
the  opinions  which  have  been  taught  to  him  instead  of  looking  squarely 
at  the  things  themselves.  Others  criticize  it  because  it  can  never  give 
that  absolutely  certain  deductive  whole,  that  complete  and  necessary 
unity  which  is  the  only  true  knowledge,  because  the  introduction  of 
anything  which  is  hypothetical  and  subjective  spoils  the  necessity  and 
universality  of  valid  knowledge.  The  former  group  of  logicians  insist 
that  thought  must  apply  to  things,  that  it  must  relate  to  actual  objects, 
that  it  must  be  free  from  fictions,  fancies,  and  prejudices,  and  to  accom¬ 
plish  this  end  they  discard  all  mental  constructions,  they  demand  that 
all  knowledge  come  from  things  themselves,  and  that  the  mind  stand  by 
passively  and  receive  this  knowledge  as  it  comes.  The  latter  group 
insist  that  knowledge  must  be  certain  and  fixed;  they  demand  universal 
objectivity  and  complete  necessity;  they  will  consider  nothing  valid  or 
true  if  it  is  relative  or  subject  to  change;  they  admit  that  there  is  a  kind 
of  probability,  a  practical  certainty,  upon  the  basis  of  which  finite 
affairs  must  proceed,  but  they  will  not  admit  that  this  has  anything  to 
do  with  genuine  knowledge.  The  one  side  considers  that  truth  comes 

from  objective  things  whenever  they  are  looked  at  thoroughly  and 

» 

faithfully,  and  fears  that  the  hypothesis  will  interfere  with  this  con¬ 
scientious  scrutiny  of  the  facts.  The  other  side  considers  truth  to  be  the 
strict  deduction  of  one  proposition  from  another,  and  fears  that  the 
hypothesis  will  substitute  subjective  guesses  for  this  deductive  certainty, 
will  introduce  particularity  and  chance  into  this  universal  objectivity. 

Now  in  the  systems  of  most  logicians  these  two  motives  are  not 
mutually  exclusive.  Many  logicians  who  feel  that  knowledge  comes 
from  the  collection  and  observation  of  obj  ective  things  entertain  the  same 


3 


4 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


ideal  of  knowledge  as  something  universal  and  objective  and  complete 
which  these  logicians  hold  who  obtain  knowledge  by  a  strict  deductive 
process.  Therefore,  although  their  main  motive  for  rejecting  the  hy¬ 
pothesis  is  their  fear  lest  it  will  obscure  the  truth  given  them  by  things 
themselves,  there  is  also  the  fear  that  their  particularity  will  destroy  the 
universality  and  certainty  of  truth. 

Bacon  and  Descartes  are  good  examples  of  those  who  reject  hypoth¬ 
eses  from  these  two  causes,  respectively,  since  in  them  the  motives  are 
comparatively  unmixed,  and  therefore  they  show  more  clearly  the 
essential  similarity  of  the  dilemma  which  ensues  when  any  thinker 
rejects  the  hypothetical  element,  in  spite  of  the  diversity  of  theoretical 
constructions  and  motives  from  which  this  rejection  arises.  If  these 
logicians  or  any  others  should  succeed  in  giving  an  adequate  account  of 
the  thinking  which  actually  goes  on  in  practical  and  scientific  thought, 
without  making  any  use  of  the  hypothesis,  it  would  be  necessary  to 
abandon  the  position  that  the  hypothesis  is  necessary  to  logic.  But  if 
they  are  all  forced  to  bring  back  the  hypothetical  element  either  under 
some  other  name,  or  in  another  mode  of  thought  which  is  eagerly  used, 
but  which  is  ungratefully  called  ‘‘subordinate”  and  “imperfect,”  or  if 
their  deduction  is  shown  to  be  empty  and  without  application  to  new 
situations,  that  fact  may  stand  as  part  proof  of  the  thesis  that  it  is 
impossible  for  logic  to  get  on  without  hypotheses. 

Bacon,  of  course,  belongs  to  the  first  group  of  logicians;  for  he 
desires  to  proceed  without  the  “mind”  altogether,  to  observe  and 
tabulate  phenomena  without  forming  any  hypothesis  about  them,  to 
record  what  he  sees  without  allowing  the  “mind”  to  form  any  guesses 
concerning  the  reasons  for  these  observed  phenomena.  Bacon’s  dis¬ 
respect  for  the  “mind”  and  its  theories  and  hypotheses  was  probably 
caused  by  the  part  which  the  “mind”  had  played  in  the  science  of  his 
time,  which  consisted  mostly  of  hasty  guesses,  based  on  most  inadequate 
observations,  of  theories  accepted  after  one  or  two  experiments,  of 
reasoning  from  authoritative  sources  rather  than  of  observation  of  the 
phenomena  in  question.  It  is  on  account  of  his  strong  revulsion  against 
this  non-observational  and  non-experimental  science  that  Bacon  went 
collection-mad,  and  wished  to  discover  everything  by  tabulation  of 
observations.  He  had  seen  much  of  the  evil  of  prejudices,  presupposi¬ 
tions,  and  hasty  conclusions;  he  charged  these  to  the  “mind,”  and  there¬ 
fore  he  proposed  to  allow  the  phenomena  to  arrange  and  group  them¬ 
selves,  without  giving  the  “mind”  any  chance  to  exert  its  baleful 
influence.  He  was  protesting  against  a  science  which  was  constructed 


MOTIVES  FOR  REJECTION  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS 


5 


without  any  foundation  of  observed  phenomena,  and  with  the  extrav¬ 
agance  of  all  reformers  he  was  not  content  to  seek  a  broader  foundation 
of  observations  on  which  to  base  and  by  which  to  prove  these  mental 
constructs,  but  attempted  to  get  along  with  nothing  except  the  observed 
phenomena;  and  this  attempt,  as  we  shall  see,  was  a  failure. 

For  the  contention  of  Bacon  is  that  if  you  collect  enough  instances 
and  put  them  together  correctly,  their  “nature”  or  the  principle  which 
explains  them  will  simply  emerge,  that  if  you  make  a  systematic  tabula¬ 
tion  of  facts  you  will  learn  all  that  is  to  be  known  about  them.  He  gives 
examples  of  long  tables,  which  are  models  for  all  investigations  of  nature, 
and  which  present  all  the  examples  known  to  science  or  popular  obser-  • 
vation  which  come  within  this  general  field.  For  example,  in  the  study 
of  heat,  Bacon  collects  in  tables  all  possible  examples  of  the  presence, 
absence,  increase,  or  decrease  of  heat,  without  any  principle  of  selection 
whatsoever. 

But  the  interesting  thing  for  a  study  of  the  hypothesis  is  that,  after 
he  has  made  these  elaborate  tables,  Bacon  turns  to  what  he  calls  the 
Interpretation  of  Nature  in  the  Affirmative,  without  recognizing  in  the 
least  that  he  is  deserting  his  principle  of  mere  tabulation  of  facts  and  is 
introducing  an  entirely  new  element,  namely,  an  explanation  of  these 
facts.  To  state  the  matter  in  his  own  words: 

Since  Truth  emerges  more  quickly  from  error  than  from  confusion,  we 
think  it  useful  to  grant  permission  to  the  Intellect,  after  having  composed  and 
weighed  three  such  Tables  of  First  Presentation  as  we  have  made,  to  gird  itself 
up  and  attempt  the  Interpretation  of  Nature  in  the  Affirmative,  both  from  the 
Instances  in  the  Tables,  and  from  those  which  occur  elsewhere.1 

This  Interpretation  of  Nature  is  really  an  organization  of  the  facts 
which  brings  order  out  of  confusion,  which  enables  him  to  select  those 
examples  from  his  table  which  have  a  bearing  on  the  explanation  and  to 
reject  those  which  do  not,  which  helps  the  investigation  by  exercising 
this  selecting  and  organizing  power  even  though  in  itself  it  should  be  a 
false  interpretation,  which  must  be  formed  by  the  mind  before  any  of 
his  methods  of  testing  truth  can  be  applied;  in  short,  it  has  all  the  marks 
of  a  working  hypothesis  although  it  is  not  called  by  that  name.  In 
making  the  tables  the  scientist  had  been  a  mere  passive  spectator  but 
now  he  is  an  active  constructor. 

This  shows  plainly  that  Bacon  has  not  succeeded  in  his  attempt  to 
gain  knowledge  by  the  collection  of  observations  alone,  without  the  addi¬ 
tion  of  hypotheses.  Until  he  introduces  hypotheses  he  has  only  tables 

1  Bacon,  Novum  Organon ,  Book  II,  sec.  20. 


6 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


of  observations,  without  any  principle  of  selection,  of  organization,  or 
any  kind  of  explanation.  These  tabulations  and  collections  cannot  be 
the  knowledge  he  is  seeking.  Surely  it  is  clear,  then,  that  if  knowledge 
cannot  come  from  a  collection  of  phenomena  as  they  are  merely  perceived 
by  the  senses,  unless  these  have  been  explained  and  interpreted  by 
thought,  that  is  to  say,  unless  some  hypotheses  have  been  introduced, 
then  these  explanations,  interpretations  or  hypotheses  cannot  be  the 
work  of  that  purely  subjective  “mind”  which  Bacon  was  so  eager  to 
exclude  from  science. 

There  is  a  well-known  passage  in  the  Novum  Organon  which  shows 
that  Bacon  did  at  times  explicitly  recognize  the  value  of  active  construct¬ 
ive  thought.  He  says: 

They  who  have  handled  the  Sciences  have  been  either  Empirics  or  Dog¬ 
matists:  the  latter,  like  Spiders,  spin  webs  out  of  themselves:  but  the  course 
of  the  Bee  lies  midway;  she  gathers  materials  from  the  flowers  of  the  garden 
and  the  field;  and  then  by  her  own  power  turns  and  digests  them.  Nor  is 
the  true  labour  of  Philosophy  unlike  hers;  it  does  not  depend  entirely  or  even 
chiefly  on  the  strength  of  the  mind,  nor  does  it  store  up  in  memory  the  materials 
provided  by  Natural  History  and  Mechanical  Experiments  unaltered,  but 
changes  and  digests  them  by  the  intellect. 

This  shows  that  Bacon  departed  at  times  in  theory  as  well  as  in  practice 
from  his  conviction  that  knowledge  must  be  elicited  entirely  from  things 
without  any  abstract  useless  generalities  added  by  the  “mind.” 

Descartes,  on  the  other  hand,  belongs  to  the  second  group  because 
his  dominant  desire  is  for  knowledge  that  is  certain,  unquestionable, 
and  necessary.  He  looks  out  over  the  whole  field  of  knowledge,  and 
finds  there  nothing  but  doubts,  errors,  presuppositions,  and  constant 
disagreements  between  learned  scholars.  He  finds  no  single  thing 
which  is  not  the  subject  of  dispute,  save  only  in  mathematics,  where, 
to  be  sure,  there  is  some  firm  and  solid  foundation.  Therefore,  he 
believes  that  the  great  task  of  thought  is  to  find  some  basis  of  indisputable 
truth,  some  knowledge  which  is  not  the  subject  of  conflict  but  is  indubi¬ 
tably  certain.  For  the  sake  of  obtaining  this  certainty,  he  attempts  to 
deduce  all  knowledge  from  simple  truths  which  are  intuitively  and  there¬ 
fore  unquestionably  known,  to  construct  a  complete  system  of  knowledge, 
proceeding  uniformly  from  the  simple  to  the  complex,  and  therefore 
admitting  no  interference  from  particular  investigations  or  limitations 
of  inquiry.  But,  besides  this  interest  in  establishing  an  unquestionable 
certainty,  Descartes  has  also  an  interest  in  solving  particular  problems 
and  in  performing  scientific  experiments.  It  is  this  latter  interest 


MOTIVES  FOR  REJECTION  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS 


7 


which  explains  the  constant  appearance,  in  his  method  of  rightly  con¬ 
ducting  the  reason,  of  those  “ questions”  which  limit  the  inquiry,  which 
select  significant  points  rather  than  construct  a  complete  system. 
These  “ questions”  are  simply  introduced  into  his  treatise,  without  any 
sign  that  he  recognizes  the  fact  that  in  many  passages  he  has  declared 
that  any  limitations  of  this  systematic  and  deductive  procedure  made  in 
the  interests  of  special  investigations,  any  exclusive  attention  to  certain 
aspects  as  more  significant  for  some  particular  problem,  is  sure  to  vitiate 
our  thinking. 

Descartes  thus  represents  two  contradictory  positions,  one  that 
knowledge  should  be  obtained  by  the  strictly  deductive  procedure  of 
the  reason,  advancing  from  certain  simple  intuitively  known  truths  to 
more  complex  truths,  without  any  limitation  by  special  investigations 
or  any  guidance  from  interest  in  definite  problems;  the  other  position, 
that  knowledge  should  be  obtained  by  striving  to  answer  definite 
“  questions,”  and  by  conducting  special  experiments  fitted  to  answer 
them.  He  makes  little  use  of  the  word  “hypothesis,”  but  it  is  plain  that 
the  former  position  is  entirely  inconsistent  with  any  use  of  hypotheses 
and  that  the  latter  proceeds  throughout  by  employing  them. 

To  take  up  the  contrasts  of  these  two  positions  in  more  detail: 

a )  The  one  point  of  view  maintains  that  we  should  seek  truth  in 
general,  not  the  answers  to  particular  questions,  that  we  should  seek 
truth  for  its  own  sake  and  should  never  entertain  any  particular  purposes 
or  ends  for  which  this  truth  might  be  used.  He  believes  this  because: 

There  is  nothing  more  prone  to  turn  us  aside  from  the  correct  way  of 
seeking  out  truth  than  this  directing  of  our  inquiries,  not  towards  their  general 

end,  but  towards  certain  special  investigations . For  example  take  our 

investigations  of  these  sciences  conducive  to  the  conveniences  of  life  or  which 
yield  that  pleasure  which  is  found  in  the  contemplation  of  truth,  practically 
the  only  joy  in  life  that  is  complete  and  untroubled  with  any  pain.  There 
we  may  indeed  expect  to  receive  the  legitimate  fruits  of  scientific  inquiry;  but 
if,  in  the  course  of  our  study,  we  think  of  them,  they  frequently  cause  us  to 
omit  many  facts  which  are  necessary  to  the  understanding  of  other  matters, 
because  they  seem  to  be  either  of  slight  value  or  of  little  interest.1 

Now  it  is  true  that  a  short-sighted  devotion  even  to  such  worthy 
ends  as  the  promotion  of  the  comforts  of  life  or  the  joys  of  knowledge 
might  tempt  one  to  omit  something  whose  value  was  not  perfectly 
apparent,  but  which  was  nevertheless  necessary  to  the  understanding 
of  the  matter  investigated.  But  it  seems  a  rather  drastic  measure  to 

1  Rules  for  Direction  of  the  Mindy  Rule  I. 


8 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


avoid  such  omissions  by  resolving  to  omit  absolutely  nothing,  to  urge 
that  because  too  narrow  limitation  of  inquiry  may  cause  unwise 
omission,  there  should  be  absolutely  no  limitations  to  any  inquiry. 
Nevertheless  this  is  the  solution  which  Descartes  proposes,  that  there 
shall  be  no  limitation  of  inquiry,  no  omission  of  any  subject,  regardless 
of  the  fact  that  this  imposes  a  Herculean  task  upon  the  investigator. 

The  other  point  of  view  demands  that  very  limitation  and  direction 
of  thought  which  the  former  rejected.  It  maintains  that  knowledge 
consists  of  simple  propositions  and  “  questions,”  which  guide  our  atten¬ 
tion  to  “something  of  which  we  are  ignorant”  and  “determine  us  to 
investigate  it  rather  than  anything  else.”1  When  he  is  discussing  these 
“questions,”  Descartes  forgets  entirely  his  fears  lest  interest  in  a  special 
investigation  will  lead  to  the  omission  of  necessary  facts,  and  takes 
delight  in  this  very  possibility  of  omitting  all  that  is  irrelevant  to  the 
problem.  He  says: 

Thus,  to  illustrate,  after  we  have  limited  ourselves  to  the  consideration  of 
this  or  that  set  of  experiments  merely  relative  to  the  magnet,  there  is  no  diffi¬ 
culty  in  dismissing  from  view  all  other  aspects  of  the  case.2 

And  again,  he  emphasizes  this  same  use  of  the  “question”  when 
he  writes : 

However,  though  in  every  “question”  something  must  be  unknown,  other¬ 
wise  there  is  no  need  to  raise  it,  we  should  nevertheless  so  define  this  unknown 
element  by  means  of  specific  conditions  that  we  shall  be  determined  towards 
the  investigation  of  one  thing  rather  than  another.3 

Descartes  makes  no  attempt  to  reconcile  these  two  views,  although 
the  one  considers  the  power  of  the  hypothesis  to  limit  investigation  to 
be  fatal  to  true  knowledge,  while  the  other  considers  this  limitation  to 
be  absolutely  necessary  to  knowledge. 

b)  The  former  view  holds  that  knowledge  is  passive  contemplation, 
gained  by  mere  careful  scrutiny  of  the  facts,  not  by  active  manipulation 
of  them.  “Science  in  its  entirety  is  true  and  evident  cognition.”4  But 
the  latter  view  does  not  limit  men  to  passive  observation  but  allows  them 
to  deal  actively  with  a  “question,”  to  “free  it  of  every  conception  super¬ 
fluous  to  its  meaning,”5  to  “split  it  up  into  various  sections  beyond 
which  analysis  cannot  go  in  minuteness.”6 

c)  The  one  view  holds  that  we  learn  the  relation  of  a  number  of 
facts  by  merely  looking  at  these  facts  until  we  grow  so  familiar  with  them 

1  Rules  for  Direction  of  the  Mind ,  Rule  XIII. 


2  Ibid. 

3  Ibid. 


4  Ibid.,  Rule  II. 
s  Ibid.,  Rule  XIII. 


6  Ibid. 


MOTIVES  FOR  REJECTION  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS 


9 


that  the  mind  grasps  their  connection  in  one  single  effort.  This  view 
is  most  clearly  stated  in  Descartes’  eleventh  rule  for  the  direction  of  the 
mind,  which  reads: 

If,  after  we  have  recognized  intuitively  a  number  of  simple  truths,  we  wish  to 
draw  any  inference  from  them,  it  is  useful  to  run  them  over  in  a  continuous 
and  uninterrupted  act  of  thought,  to  reflect  upon  their  relations  to  one  another, 
and  to  grasp  together  distinctly  a  number  of  these  propositions  so  far  as  is 
possible  at  the  same  time. 

Descartes  uses  for  an  example  of  this  the  case  of  one  who  has  recognized 
intuitively  the  relation  of  A  to  B  and  of  B  to  C,  and  of  C  to  D.  He  then  ■ 
points  out  that  these  recognitions  do  not  necessarily  lead  him  to  see  the  re¬ 
lation  of  A  to  D ,  and  that  he  can  only  make  out  this  relation  by  remember¬ 
ing  all  the  other  relations.  From  which  he  makes  this  surprising  deduction : 

What  I  have  to  do  is  to  run  over  them  all  repeatedly  in  my  mind,  until  I 
pass  so  quickly  from  the  first  to  the  last  that  practically  no  step  is  left  to  the 
memory,  and  I  seem  to  view  the  whole  all  at  the  same  time.1 

The  other  view  does  not  rely  on  this  mere  repetition,  where  the 
conclusion  is  carried  by  familiarity  and  rapidity  of  association,  but  holds 
rather  that  where  we  have  recognized  intuitively  a  number  of  simple 
truths  and  wish  to  draw  an  inference  from  them,  we  examine  carefully 
all  the  relations  to  see  whether  they  do  or  do  not  bear  on  the  desired 
inference,  set  aside  those  which  do  not,  and  retain  those  which  do  bear 
upon  it,  and  thus  draw  our  conclusion.  Using  Descartes’  own  example, 
to  illustrate  this  different  view  of  his,  the  thinker  does  not  go  over  the 
series  of  relations  of  A  to  B,  of  B  to  C,  of  C  to  D,  merely  to  increase  his 
speed  until  he  can  pass  in  one  leap  from  A  to  D,  but  instead  he  has 
come  in  some  way  to  desire  to  know  the  relation  of  A  to  D,  and  therefore 
goes  over  the  series  looking  at  each  member  solely  from  the  standpoint 
of  its  connection  with  this  problem  of  ^4’s  relation  to  D.  Thus  when 
he  wishes  to  make  an  inference  he  does  not  go  over  all  his  certain  knowl¬ 
edge  for  the  purpose  of  putting  it  all  together  in  one  act  of  thought,  but 
instead  he  attends  only  to  those  elements  of  that  certain  knowledge 
which  may  bear  upon  the  question  he  desires  to  answer.  This  is  expressed 
by  Descartes  in  the  following  extract: 

Here  therefore  we  maintain  that  what  is  worth  while  doing  is  simply  this — 
to  explore  in  an  orderly  way  all  the  data  furnished  by  the  proposition,  to  set 
aside  everything  which  we  see  is  clearly  immaterial,  to  retain  what  is  necessarily 
bound  up  with  the  problem,  and  to  reserve  what  is  doubtful  for  a  more  careful 
examination.2 

1  Ibid.,  Rule  XI. 


2  Ibid.,  Rule  XIII. 


IO 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


Now  this  view  demands  a  hypothesis  as  clearly  as  the  former  view 
excludes  it,  because  it  is  only  a  hypothesis  which  can  enable  us  to  exclude 
what  is  immaterial  and  retain  what  is  bound  up  with  the  problem, 
which  can  “ determine  us”  toward  the  investigation  of  “one  thing  rather 
than  another.” 

d)  The  first  of  these  views  holds  that  the  whole  task  of  acquiring 
knowledge  must  be  performed  by  one  man,  who  must  accept  absolutely 
nothing  from  other  thinkers,  but  work  everything  out  for  himself,  in  order 
that  his  knowledge  may  not  contain  any  untested  presuppositions,  or  any 
assumptions  adopted  solely  because  of  the  authority  of  tradition.  But 
the  second  view,  which  holds  that  knowledge  is  obtained  by  answering 
definite  questions,  contends  that  it  is  impossible  for  one  man  to  perform 
all  the  detailed  experiments  necessary  to  the  growth  of  knowledge,  and 
that  there  is  need  for  many  men  to  join  together  in  investigation,  for 
one  to  begin  where  the  other  left  off,  and  for  each  to  limit  himself  to  a 
few  particular  problems.  Thus  Descartes  says: 

But,  having  the  intention  of  devoting  all  my  life  to  the  investigation  of  a 
knowledge  which  is  so  essential,  and  having  discovered  a  path  which  appears 
to  me  to  be  of  such  a  nature  that  we  must  by  its  means  infallibly  reach  our  end 
if  we  pursue  it,  unless,  indeed,  we  are  prevented  by  the  shortness  of  life  or  by 
lack  of  experience,  I  judged  that  there  was  no  better  provision  against  those  two 
impediments  than  faithfully  to  communicate  to  the  public  the  little  which 
I  should  myself  have  discovered,  and  to  beg  all  well-inclined  persons  to  proceed 
further  by  contributing,  each  one  according  to  his  own  inclination  and  ability, 
to  the  experiments  which  must  be  made,  and  then  to  communicate  to  the  public 
all  the  things  which  they  might  discover,  in  order  that  the  last  should  commence 
where  the  preceding  had  left  off;  and  thus,  by  joining  together  the  lives  and 
labours  of  many,  we  should  collectively  proceed  much  further  than  any  one 
in  particular  could  succeed  in  doing.1 

These  contradictions  arose  from  the  fact  that  Descartes  had  in  mind 
two  different  kinds  of  thought,  aiming  at  two  different  ends:  one  at 
solving  problems  and  making  investigations,  and  the  other  at  establishing 
a  general  unquestionable  certainty.  He  was  principally  interested  in 
obtaining  general  certainty,  since  he  was  obsessed  by  a  dread  of  universal 
skepticism  and  was  hunting  a  barrier  against  that.  On  this  account  he 
followed  the  same  method  which  was  used  by  men  desiring  religious 
certainty,  that  is,  he  took  refuge  in  deduction  and  sought  bases  for  that 
deduction  which  could  be  relied  upon  as  given  once  for  all,  and  never 
to  be  questioned.  It  would  probably  never  have  occurred  to  Descartes, 

1  Discourse  on  the  Method ,  Part  VI. 


MOTIVES  FOR  REJECTION  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS 


II 


from  his  examination  of  thinking  as  it  is  actually  done,  that  the  proper 
method  of  thought  was  mathematical  deduction  from  accepted  and 
stable  premises.  But  he  was  guided  in  his  investigation  by  the  specific 
purpose  of  finding  some  unquestionable  certainty,  and  this  appealed  to 
him  as  the  only  way  to  find  it. 

But  Descartes  was  also  interested  in  the  solution  of  problems  and 
the  conduct  of  experiments  and  investigations,  and  the  characteristics  of 
thought  which  his  observations  of  actual  cases  of  investigation  revealed 
to  him  were  not  the  same  as  those  which  followed  from  his  effort  to 
establish  this  deductive  certainty.  When  he  examined  the  strictly 
deductive  thought  he  perceived  that  it  started  from  certain  given  and . 
unquestioned  bases,  proceeded  to  deduce  all  the  facts  and  relations 
which  followed  from  them,  and  sought  above  all  things  to  obtain  a 
consistent  system;  whereas,  when  he  examined  the  way  men  conducted 
experiments  and  solved  problems,  he  discovered  that  they  started  from 
one  limited  and  specific  inquiry,  selected  facts  which  were  pertinent  and 
rejected  those  which  were  not,  and  sought  above  all  things  to  solve  that 
particular  problem.  The  purpose  of  establishing  certainty  demanded 
that  the  thinker  add  nothing  and  change  nothing  but  passively  receive 
what  followed  from  these  stable  principles;  whereas  the  study  of  actual 
experiments  convinced  him  that  the  thinker  must  actively  manipulate 
his  material.  Certainty  is  decreased  by  a  large  number  of  men  each 
performing  part  of  a  deductive  proof,  whereas  complicated  specific 
problems  require  the  co-operation  of  many  men.  Thought  which 
proposes  to  establish  certainty  iiberhaupt  will  not  use  hypotheses  because 
they  have  no  place  in  its  step-by-step  process,  and  also  because  they 
express  an  active  limitation  of  the  inquiry  and  a  selection  of  material 
which  would  not  be  the  same  for  every  individual,  whereas  certainty  is 
established  by  a  passive  perception  of  relations  which  would  be  exactly 
the  same  for  every  rational  human  being.  But  thought  which  proposes 
to  solve  particular  problems  will  use  hypotheses,  just  because  they  do 
limit  the  problem,  do  direct  attention  to  important  phenomena,  and  do 
allow  for  active  manipulation  of  the  material.  That  ideal  of  knowledge 
as  something  complete,  finished,  and  deductively  certain  always  causes 
a  perfectly  natural  distrust  of  hypotheses,  because  finished  and  perfect 
systems  cannot  be  built  up  in  that  way.  Nevertheless,  the  character¬ 
istics  of  thought  which  that  ideal  of  knowledge  forced  upon  Descartes 
were  not  satisfactory  to  him  as  an  account  of  the  thinking  which  he 
actually  did,  and  he  continually  added  characteristics  which  could  account 
for  his  actual  experience  of  thought  and  investigation. 


12 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


Thus  we  see  that  two  logicians  who  started  with  radically  different 
motives  for  excluding  the  hypothesis  and  created  absolutely  different 
systems  of  logic  were  both  alike  forced  to  admit  the  hypothesis  under 
another  name  before  they  could  give  accounts  of  the  thinking  process 
which  satisfied  them.  We  will  now  take  certain  other  logicians  in  whom 
one  or  the  other  of  these  two  motives  was  dominant  in  raising  objections 
to  the  hypothesis  and  see  if  they  were  any  more  successful  in  getting  along 
without  any  hypothetical  or  tentative  idea. 


CHAPTER  II 


THOSE  LOGICIANS  WHO  REJECT  HYPOTHESES  BECAUSE 
THEY  WISH  TO  DERIVE  THEIR  KNOWLEDGE 
DIRECTLY  FROM  THINGS 

We  have  seen  that  Bacon  wished  to  derive  his  knowledge  directly 
from  things  themselves  in  order  that  he  might  escape  the  prejudices  of 
the  mind,  the  idols  of  the  tribe,  the  cave,  the  market-place,  and  the 
theater.  He  felt  that  the  only  way  in  which  he  could  ever  obtain  truth ' 
was  by  shutting  out  all  the  premature  judgments  and  guesses  of  the 
“mind”  and  facing  the  facts  squarely.  Mill  shared  with  Bacon  this 
desire  to  rid  himself  of  the  fictions  of  the  imagination,  to  get  all  his 
information  from  things ;  but  with  Mill  this  was  complicated  by  a  social 
motive.1  He  dreaded  to  let  the  mind  play  any  active  part  lest  it  bring 
in  some  of  those  fixed  preconceptions  which  he  knew  were  closely  con¬ 
nected  with  aristocratic  privilege.  With  Locke  the  social  motive  was 
the  sole  cause  for  the  attempt  to  obtain  all  knowledge  from  ideas  which 
were  given,  fixed  and  complete,  to  an  external  mind. 

Locke  and  Mill  did  not  necessarily  identify  the  hypothesis  with 
those  fixed  and  a  priori  principles  or  those  innate  ideas  which  justified 
the  religious  and  political  status  quo ,  which  were  identified  with  those 
moral,  political,  or  religious  standards  that  were  in  vogue  when  these 
particular  changeless  ideas  originated.  But  they  believed  that  these 
fixed  principles  are  found  in  the  “mind,”  that  they  are  the  specific 
contribution  which  the  “mind”  makes  to  knowledge,  and  the  only  way 
they  knew  to  avoid  them  was  to  show  that  no  active  participation  on 
the  part  of  the  “mind”  is  necessary  to  knowledge,  but  that  knowledge 
arises  from  the  effect  of  wholly  “objective”  things  on  a  completely 
passive  mind.  Thus  they  were  led  to  reject  the  hypothesis  because  of 
its  “mental”  character,  because  they  did  not  wish  to  admit  any  contribu¬ 
tions  whatsoever  from  the  “mind,”  and  they  classed  hypotheses  among 
such  contributions. 

Thus  Locke’s  attack  on  the  innate  ideas  which  had  flourished  in 
the  Cartesian  doctrine  and  also  in  the  teaching  of  the  English  Platonists 
was  motivated  by  his  opposition  to  authority  and  conservatism  in  religion 
and  in  politics.  He  felt  convinced  that  one  of  the  strongholds  of  author- 

1  The  term  “social”  is  here  used  for  convenience  to  include  theological,  political, 

and  moral. 


i3 


I4 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


ity  and  conservatism  was  the  innate  idea,  because  that  is  bound  to  be 
fixed  and  stable  and  to  resist  change.  Innate  moral  principles  supported 
in  any  system  are  sure  to  be  the  principles  which  were  held  when  that 
system  was  first  formed;  innate  political  principles  are  sure  to  uphold 
the  kind  of  government  which  was  in  power  when  the  system  in  question 
originated.  Therefore,  in  the  interest  of  freedom,  Locke  set  himself  to 
prove  that  there  were  no  ideas  which  had  been  present  in  the  mind  from 
the  beginning,  and  that  the  whole  of  human  knowledge  could  be  accounted 
for  without  the  assistance  of  any  innate  principles.  To  make  sure  that 
the  mind  did  not  need  to  contribute  any  innate  ideas,  he  showed  that  it 
remained  entirely  passive  in  the  first  process  of  obtaining  knowledge, 
that  it  was  absolutely  blank,  a  white  paper  upon  which  nothing  at  all 
was  written  until  the  inner  and  outer  senses  made  their  marks  upon  it 
in  the  form  of  simple  ideas.  For,  although  rejecting  the  innate  principles 
of  Descartes,  Locke  retained  in  full  force  his  separation  between  the 
“mind”  and  the  world. 

Now  since  the  “mind”  was  not  to  be  allowed  to  have  any  active 
part  in  the  reception  of  these  ideas,  since  it  might  not  criticize  them  or 
manipulate  them,  and  since  they  came  from  an  entirely  external  world, 
they  had  to  be  given,  complete,  fixed,  and  unambiguous.  That  destroys 
all  possibility  of  a  hypothesis,  because  whenever  you  make  a  hypothesis 
you  do  so  just  because  the  simple  ideas  given  you  by  your  senses  are  not 
fixed  and  complete,  but  contain  some  ambiguity,  some  question.  In 
order  that  you  may  deal  with  that  ambiguity,  answer  that  question, 
you  hold  an  idea  in  suspense,  entertain  it  experimentally,  in  other  words, 
as  a  hypothesis.  It  is  when  the  report  you  receive  from  your  senses 
is  not  unambiguous,  when  you  are  not  sure  whether  it  is  a  speck  on  your 
telescope,  a  defect  in  your  eyeball,  or  a  new  planet,  that  you  make 
hypotheses  to  aid  in  your  investigation.  When  there  is  no  ambiguity 
you  simply  accept  the  fact  and  go  on  to  some  real  problem. 

But  there  are  other  objections  to  this  position  that  all  our  simple 
ideas  are  given,  complete  and  unambiguous,  besides  this  one,  that  it  fails 
to  account  for  hypotheses.  It  also  makes  all  reflection  unnecessary, 
because,  if  it  is  possible  to  open  your  eyes  and  receive  perfectly  adequate 
and  complete  truth,  why  should  you  ever  do  any  reflective  thinking? 
Also  this  theory  is  powerless  to  account  for  any  errors  or  mistakes  at  all, 
unless  it  is  willing  to  call  in  question  the  possibility  that  any  of  these 
simple  ideas  can  be  valid.  For  these  ideas  all  come  to  the  mind  ready 
made  and  finished,  with  exactly  the  same  stamp  of  validity  upon  them, 
so  that  if  it  is  possible  to  doubt  that  one  of  them  is  really  true,  it  is 


LOGICIANS  OF  KNOWLEDGE  DIRECTLY  FROM  THINGS 


15 


equally  possible  to  doubt  that  any  of  them  are  really  true.  But  since  the 
mind  has  been  declared  completely  passive  in  its  reception  of  these  ideas 
it  cannot  do  anything  to  test  them;  since  the  mind  has  been  absolutely 
separated  from  the  objective  world,  it  cannot  in  any  way  get  into  closer 
connection  with  the  sources  of  these  ideas  so  that  it  can  solve  the  question 
of  their  validity;  and  therefore,  if  this  question  once  arises,  it  becomes 
an  insoluble  one. 

Locke  realized  that  he  could  not  admit  any  doubt  concerning  the 
truth  of  his  simple  ideas  into  his  system,  that  he  could  not  afford  to  explain 
any  of  the  mistakes  and  errors  which  arise  in  human  knowledge  by 
alleging  a  lack  of  conformity  between  the  simple  ideas  and  the  external 
facts.  Therefore  he  asserts  that  since  the  mind  cannot  in  the  least 
control  these  simple  ideas,  make  new  ones,  destroy  those  which  it  has 
received,  nor  alter  those  which  it  is  sure  to  receive  if  it  attends  to  an 
external  object,  these  ideas  are  the  effects  of  the  powers  of  the  external 
objects,  ordained  by  God  to  produce  those  ideas  in  us.  Hence  these 
simple  ideas  must  all  agree  perfectly  with  the  reality  of  those  objects. 

Therefore,  the  simple  ideas  cannot  account  for  any  use  of  the  hy¬ 
pothesis,  any  reflective  thinking  or  inquiry,  or  any  possibility  of  error. 
But  any  hope  that  a  more  adequate  account  of  these  can  be  given  in 
connection  with  those  complex  ideas  which  are  the  voluntary  acts  of 
the  mind  is  destroyed  almost  as  soon  as  we  find  out  what  these  complex 
ideas  are.  For  the  only  complex  ideas  which  have  anything  at  all  to 
do  with  the  external  world  are  those  of  substance,  and  if  they  are  to  be 
true,  then  they  must  be  united  by  the  mind  in  exactly  the  same  way 
in  which  they  were  united  in  nature.  But  this  is  to  state  our  problem 
of  reflective  thinking  and  of  error  in  just  the  same  insoluble  terms  in 
which  they  were  stated  in  the  case  of  the  simple  idea;  the  necessity  is 
for  an  exact  copy  of  completely  external  objects;  there  is  no  excuse  for, 
and  no  possible  motive  for,  anything  except  the  most  passive  following 
of  the  pattern  set;  and  if  the  problem  is  made  to  consist  in  how  any 
mental  construction  can  conform  to  this  external  pattern  that  problem 
becomes  at  once  insoluble.  The  other  complex  ideas  are  no  better  fitted 
to  explain  reflection,  hypothesis,  and  error,  because  they  have  nothing 
at  all  to  do  with  the  external  world;  they  are  merely  “voluntary  collec¬ 
tions  of  simple  ideas,  which  the  mind  puts  together  without  reference 
to  any  real  archetypes,  or  standing  patterns  existing  anywhere.”1  To 
make  all  our  problems  and  inquiries,  all  our  reflective  thinking,  all  our 
real  mental  activity,  concern  ideas  which  have  no  reference  to  anything 

1  Locke,  Essay  Concerning  Human  Understanding ,  Book  II,  chap,  xxxi,  sec.  3. 


i6 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


in  the  world,  which  are  wholly  mental  constructions,  is  to  make  thinking 
such  a  useless  luxury  that  no  sensible  person  would  ever  care  to  indulge 
in  it.  Yet  that  this  is  the  position  to  which  Locke  was  driven  at  times 
by  his  theory  of  the  genesis  of  knowledge,  by  his  insistence  on  giving 
the  mind  certain  fixed  and  unambiguous  ideas  to  start  with,  is  proved 
by  such  statements  as  the  following: 

Since  the  mind,  in  all  its  thoughts  and  reasonings,  hath  no  other  immediate 
object  but  its  own  ideas,  which  it  alone  does  or  can  contemplate,  it  is  evident 
that  our  knowledge  is  only  conversant  about  them.  ....  Knowledge,  then, 
seems  to  me  to  be  nothing  but  the  perception  of  the  connexion  and  agreement, 
or  disagreement  and  repugnancy  of  any  of  our  ideas.1 

This  trouble  began  when  Locke  separated  the  mind  from  the  world 
so  completely  that  no  idea  in  this  exclusive  mental  world  could  be 
compared  with  any  fact  in  the  equally  exclusive  physical  world,  and  then 
asserted  that  the  mind  received  from  this  physical  world  perfectly  fixed 
and  given  mental  ideas  which  it  then  proceeded  to  combine  in  the  form 
of  complex  ideas.  That  made  hypotheses  impossible,  because  a  hypoth¬ 
esis  demands  some  connection  between  ideas  and  real  things;  it  must 
be  a  tentative  plan  made  to  assist  in  dealing  with  the  real  world.  Now 
simple  ideas  are  not,  according  to  Locke,  in  any  sense  constructed,  and 
therefore  they  can  have  no  hypothetical  or  tentative  element,  but  are 
given  complete  and  fixed.  Complex  ideas  of  substance  are  untrue  just 
as  they  are  made  by  the  mind,  and  true  only  so  far  as  they  are  received 
from  an  external  nature;  therefore  they  cannot  assume  the  role  of 
hypotheses.  Other  complex  ideas  are  made  by  the  mind  but  have  nothing 
at  all  to  do  with  external  reality,  and  therefore  they  cannot  account  for 
hypotheses.  But  Locke’s  account  not  only  made  hypotheses  impossible, 
it  also  made  it  impossible  to  account  for  both  truth  and  error,  made  it 
necessary  to  assume  a  miraculous  correspondence  between  ideas  and  the 
world,  since  no  other  correspondence  was  explicable,  and  made  it  impos¬ 
sible  to  find  any  use  for  reflective  thinking  or  any  knowledge  which  was 
more  than  mere  juggling  with  wholly  subjective  ideas. 

John  Stuart  Mill’s  social  motive  was  exactly  the  same  as  Locke’s, 
namely  to  escape  the  social  consequences  of  given,  innate,  a  priori  ideas. 
He  felt,  as  Locke  did,  that  these  inevitably  came  to  be  identified  with  the 
existing  social  order,  that  they  were  the  greatest  bulwarks  of  aristocratic 
privilege,  that  they  were  the  constant  opponents  of  a  democratic  order. 
He  wished  to  make  room  in  his  theory  of  knowledge  for  growth  and 

1  Locke,  Essay  Concerning  Human  Understanding,  Book  IV,  chap,  i,  secs,  i  and  2 
(italics  mine). 


LOGICIANS  OF  KNOWLEDGE  DIRECTLY  FROM  THINGS 


17 


experiment  and  change,  in  order  that  there  might  be  room  in  his  theory 
of  government  for  development  and  freedom.  Now  how  could  he  free 
thought  from  its  dependence  on  certain  fixed,  innate  principles  which 
it  brings  to  experience  and  which  it  forces  upon  all  the  concrete  material 
of  perception  ?  At  first  Mill  felt  that  this  was  to  be  done  in  much  the 
same  way  that  Locke  had  done  it — by  refusing  to  allow  the  “mind” 
to  bring  anything  to  perception,  by  refusing  to  allow  it  to  play  any 
active  part  in  thinking,  by  keeping  it  merely  receptive. 

This  is  the  secret  of  Mill’s  intermittent  fear  of  the  activity  of  the 
mind,  and  of  his  conviction  that,  if  he  can  only  get  rid  of  the  presupposi¬ 
tions  and  fancies  of  that  mind  and  get  face  to  face  with  things,  truth  will  « 
appear.  He  objects  to  hypotheses  because  they  mark  the  intervention 
of  the  “mind,”  which  is  likely  to  bring  in  error  and  prejudice  and  author¬ 
ity  and  precedent.  For  discovery  of  truth  no  hypotheses,  no  precedents, 
no  mental  constructs  are  necessary:  it  is  possible  to  progress  from  one 
particular  straight  to  another  particular.  Things  themselves,  just  as 
they  are  given,  contain  all  the  information  necessary,  and  by  careful 
and  minute  observation  of  these  things  you  may  discover  the  conceptions 
or  theories  which  are  within  them.  In  Mill’s  own  words: 

The  conceptions,  then,  which  we  employ  for  the  colligation  and  methodiza- 
tion  of  facts,  do  not  develop  themselves  from  within,  but  are  impressed 
upon  the  mind  from  without.1 

And  again  he  says : 

The  conception  by  which  the  mind  arranges  and  gives  unity  to  phenomena 
.  ...  is  not  furnished  by  the  mind  until  it  has  been  furnished  to  the  mind; 
and  the  facts  which  supply  it  are  sometimes  extraneous  facts,  but  more  often 
the  very  facts  which  we  are  attempting  to  arrange  by  it.2 

That  is,  it  is  not  necessary  to  make  any  suppositions  or  guesses;  we  must 
simply  examine  carefully  the  objective  phenomena,  compare  them 
minutely,  and  abstract  the  general  conceptions  which  reside  within 
them. 

In  those  parts  of  his  logic  which  purport  to  do  without  hypotheses 
altogether,  Mill’s  examples  proceed  by  a  cumbrous  collecting  process 
which  would  not  have  been  necessary  if  the  hypothesis  were  freely  used; 
nevertheless,  they  all  show  some  evidences  of  a  hypothetical  method 
which  steals  in  against  his  will.  One  such  example  is  found  in  his  account 
of  the  arrangement  and  classification  of  a  large  number  of  objects.3 
He  asserts  that  he  accomplishes  this  task  by  taking  one  of  the  objects 

1  Logic ,  Book  IV,  chap,  ii,  sec.  2. 

3  Ibid.,  sec.  3. 


3  Ibid. 


1 8 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


as  a  standard  and  comparing  it  with  all  the  rest,  taken  one  at  a  time. 
This  does  at  first  sound  like  a  perfectly  objective  process  in  which  the 
objects  furnish  their  own  classification  and  no  thoughts  or  ideas  are 
needed.  But  upon  more  careful  examination,  we  find  that  he  admits 
that  in  every  case  there  must  always  be  one  judgment,  namely,  that  two 
objects  agree  enough  to  be  put  in  the  same  class,  and  that,  therefore, 
this  class  is  not  presented  by  the  objects  themselves  but  is  constructed 
in  dealing  with  those  objects.  Besides  this  one  constructive  activity 
which  Mill  considers  always  necessary,  there  are  two  others  which  he 
admits  at  times,  without  which  this  process  of  classification  is  exceedingly 
toilsome;  these  are,  first,  the  choice  of  the  object  to  be  taken  as  a  standard 
on  the  basis  of  which  one  of  the  objects  in  question  “  offers  in  a  peculiarly 
striking  manner  some  important  character”  and  will  therefore  make  a 
good  standard,  and  secondly,  the  decision  that  some  of  the  circumstances 
of  the  first  general  conception  are  unimportant  and  can  be  omitted. 
So,  even  in  his  own  example,  Mill  fails  to  show  that  conceptions  come 
from  the  objects  themselves,  without  any  active  construction,  without 
the  use  of  any  ideas  or  hypotheses. 

Another  of  Mill’s  examples  to  prove  that  conceptions  “are  furnished 
to  the  mind”  is  Kepler’s  discovery  of  the  elliptic  orbit  of  the  planet 
Mars.1  Mill  says  that  in  the  actual  discovery  Kepler  did  have  to  bring 
the  general  conception  of  an  ellipse  which  was  already  in  his  mind  to  the 
phenomena,  but  that  this  necessity  was  due  entirely  to  the  invisibility  of 
the  orbit.  If  Kepler  had  been  able  to  see  the  orbit,  he  could  have  obtained 
his  general  conception  of  an  ellipse  just  as  well  from  that  phenomenon 
as  from  those  objects  from  which  he  did  obtain  it  before  he  applied  it  to 
the  orbit  of  Mars.  Therefore,  it  is  merely  the  accident  of  the  invisibility 
of  the  paths  which  made  it  impossible  to  follow  the  ordinary  procedure 
and  get  the  organizing  general  conception  from  the  phenomena  which 
were  to  be  organized. 

Now  Mill  is  perfectly  justified  in  pointing  out  here  that  the  concept 
of  the  ellipse  was  originally  derived  in  connection  with  objects,  that  it 
was  not  made  up  de  novo  by  the  isolated  activity  of  the  mind  and  then 
applied  to  the  observed  phenomena,  and  that  in  almost  every  case,  the 
general  conception  which  is  used  to  explain  certain  phenomena  might 
have  been  derived  from  those  phenomena  themselves.  But  what  he 
does  not  recognize  is  the  fact  that  it  was  only  because  Kepler  had  formed 
an  idea  of  the  ellipse  from  observing  it  among  other  simpler  or  better- 
known  phenomena  that  it  was  any  help  to  him  in  forming  a  general 

1  Logic ,  Book  IV,  chap,  i,  sec.  2. 


LOGICIANS  OF  KNOWLEDGE  DIRECTLY  FROM  THINGS 


19 


conception  of  the  path  of  the  planet.  If  he  had  known  nothing  about 
ellipses  except  that  the  planet  Mars  described  one,  then  the  concept 
ellipse  would  not  have  helped  him  to  simplify  the  relations  of  the  orbit; 
for  the  way  in  which  a  general  conception  organizes  and  simplifies 
relations  is  by  putting  them  in  a  form  which  is  more  familiar  and  more 
easily  handled.  It  is  true,  as  Mill  says,  that  “every  conception  which 
can  be  made  the  instrument  for  connecting  a  set  of  facts  might  have  been 
originally  evolved  from  those  very  facts.”  But  even  so,  it  has  to  be 
evolved;  if  it  were  but  a  condensed  statement  of  the  facts  right  before 
the  eyes  of  the  investigator,  then  it  would  not  be  of  use  in  connecting 
and  organizing  those  facts. 

In  this  example  Mill  really  has  made  out  a  very  good  case  against 
any  thinker  who  supposes  that  general  conceptions  are  furnished  by  the 
“mind”  alone  out  of  all  connection  with  objects,  that  “in  comparing 
things  with  each  other  and  taking  note  of  their  agreement  we  merely 
recognize  as  realized  in  the  outer  world  something  that  we  already  had 
in  our  minds.”  But  in  drawing  his  conclusions  he  asserts  too  much. 
He  is  not  content  to  disprove  the  theory  that  the  mind  forces  its  inde¬ 
pendently  fabricated  conceptions  upon  a  world  of  passive  phenomena, 
and  to  assert  that  these  conceptions  are  the  products  of  the  interaction 
and  co-operation  of  the  mind  and  the  phenomena;  but  he  goes  on  to 
assert  what  his  example  cannot  prove,  that  the  wholly  independent 
objects  force  these  conceptions  upon  a  passive  mind. 

Another  thing  Mill  does  not  account  for  in  his  statement  that  the 
facts  themselves  impress  the  conceptions  upon  a  waiting  mind,  and  that 
no  hypothesis  or  mental  activity  is  needed,  is  that  the  facts  are  so  mani¬ 
fold,  so  many  sided,  that  they  will  be  a  mere  chaos,  unless  there  is  an 
active  mind  which  focuses  its  attention  on  one  phase  of  the  situation. 
Without  some  hypothesis  to  focus  its  attention  thus,  without  some 
purpose  to  guide  it,  a  merely  passive  mind  might  stare  endlessly  at  the 
facts  without  reaching  any  conclusion.  To  take  this  example  of  Mill’s, 
Kepler  might  have  stared  at  the  planet  Mars  for  years,  he  might  have 
recorded  and  tabulated  thousands  of  facts  about  it,  and  yet  never  have 
formed  any  general  conception  of  its  path,  if  he  had  not  actively  selected 
those  facts  which  could  help  him  to  form  such  a  conception,  and  had  not 
excluded  all  others.  The  hypothesis  that  there  was  a  regular  path,  the 
tentative  hypotheses  concerning  the  possible  paths,  and  the  comparison 
of  Tycho  Brahe’s  observations  with  these  successive  hypotheses  made 
possible  an  explanation  and  organization  of  what  would  otherwise 
have  been  mere  scattered  observations  on  all  possible  aspects  of  the 


20 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


situation.  The  phenomena  themselves  will  never  do  this  work  of 
selection. 

A  very  simple  example  taken  from  a  judicial  investigation,  which 
Mill  gives  as  a  case  of  induction  without  hypothesis,  well  illustrates  this 
need  of  ideas  or  hypotheses  in  selecting  and  organizing  observations. 
He  says  here: 

We  can  ascertain  whether  a  man  was  murdered  or  died  a  natural  death, 
from  the  indications  exhibited  by  the  corpse,  the  presence  or  absence  of  signs 
of  struggling  on  the  ground  or  on  the  adjacent  objects,  the  marks  of  blood,  the 
footsteps  of  the  supposed  murderers,  and  so  on,  proceeding  throughout  on 
uniformities  ascertained  by  a  perfect  induction  without  any  mixture  of  hy¬ 
pothesis.1 

But  here  he  has  already  represented  two  rival  hypotheses,  one  that  the 
man  died  a  natural  death  and  the  other  that  he  was  murdered,  and  it  is 
only  in  relation  to  these  hypotheses  that  the  facts  mentioned  were 
selected.  There  was  an  infinite  number  of  other  facts,  from  the  color 
of  the  man’s  hair  to  the  variety  of  tree  under  which  he  was  found,  and 
it  is  only  the  presence  of  the  hypothesis  or  idea  of  murder  which  selects 
the  footsteps  on  the  ground  as  the  important  phenomena.  Without 
that  hypothesis  they  would  be  no  more  likely  to  be  noticed  than  the  size 
and  color  of  the  flowers  which  grew  beside  his  dead  body. 

Besides  the  fact  that  Mill’s  own  examples  of  induction,  selected  for 
that  very  purpose,  do  not  succeed  in  eliminating  hypotheses,  there  is 
another  strong  objection  to  his  contention  that  the  facts  themselves 
give  us  our  knowledge,  without  any  hypotheses  added  by  the  mind, 
that  the  organizing  and  systematizing  conceptions  of  science  are  impressed 
upon  the  mind  from  without,  not  formed  by  the  activity  of  the  mind 
as  it  works  with  phenomena.  That  objection  is  that  on  this  supposition 
we  are  left  with  no  explanation  for  error,  for  mistaken  conceptions,  for 
false  theories.  In  these  actual  examples  which  Mill  gives  it  is  possible 
to  account  for  the  errors  which  arise  just  because  he  has  not  succeeded 
in  excluding  hypotheses.  For  instance,  in  the  classification  of  objects 
it  is  easy  to  decide  that  two  objects  are  enough  alike  to  be  classed  together, 
when  their  resemblances  are  only  superficial.  Then  the  conception 
formed  by  an  examination  of  the  respects  in  which  they  were  alike  would 
be  worthless  and  false.  In  the  judicial  investigation  or  in  the  geological 
inquiry,  the  true  cause  might  be  something  absolutely  different  from  the 
hypothesis  formed.  Then  the  fact  that  the  hypotheses  held  always 
determine  the  data  selected  might  cause  a  neglect  of  those  facts  which 

1  Logic ,  Book  III,  chap,  xiv,  sec.  7. 


LOGICIANS  OF  KNOWLEDGE  DIRECTLY  FROM  THINGS 


21 


point  to  the  correct  cause  and  thus  lead  to  a  false  opinion.  But  if  Mill 
should  succeed  in  eliminating  hypotheses  he  would  be  left  without  any 
explanation  of  the  errors  which  arise.  If  the  mind  were  entirely  passive 
and  merely  allowed  the  facts  to  impress  conceptions,  principles,  theories, 
upon  its  receptive  surface,  all  of  these  donations  of  the  facts  would  have 
to  be  absolutely  true.  We  know  that  our  knowledge  is  never  absolutely 
free  from  error,  but  there  would  be  no  way  to  account  for  its  presence 
unless  we  endowed  the  objective  facts  with  a  spirit  of  perversity  and 
wilfulness,  in  addition  to  their  already  heavy  endowment  of  selective 
ability  and  power  to  organize  themselves. 

We  have  seen  that,  even  in  that  part  of  his  logic  where  Mill  is  claiming 
to  proceed  entirely  without  hypotheses  and  to  receive  his  explanations  , 
of  phenomena  from  the  conceptions  which  these  phenomena  impress 
upon  the  mind,  he  is  after  all  making  use  of  hypotheses.  There  are  other 
parts  of  his  logic  where  he  recognizes  the  use  he  makes  of  these  hypotheses; 
parts  where  he  compromises  by  calling  them  a  convenience,  an  aid  to 
investigation,  which  can,  however,  be  carried  on  without  their  help  by 
the  collection  and  observation  of  all  the  facts;  and  still  other  parts  where 
he  asserts  that  the  hypothesis  is  not  only  useful  but  also  necessary  to 
investigation,  to  the  discovery  of  truth. 

Mill’s  first  step  in  the  recognition  of  the  place  of  hypotheses  in 
investigation  is  made  without  changing  his  conception  of  the  nature  of 
the  hypothesis,  which  remains  an  independent  creation  of  the  “mind,” 
a  supposition  or  guess  which  is  either  without  any  actual  evidence,  or 
else  is  made  “on  evidence  avowedly  insufficient.”  But  although  these 
hypotheses  are  mere  suppositions  and  guesses,  although  they  are  invented 
by  the  “mind,”  Mill  still  considers  them  useful,  and  useful  in  three  ways. 
In  the  first  place  they  enable  “  the  imagination  to  represent  to  itself  an 
obscure  phenomenon  in  a  familiar  light.”  In  order  that  it  may  do  this 
the  hypothesis  must  contain  some  well-known  fact,  because  some  part 
of  it  must  be  already  familiar,  or  how  could  it  render  the  obscure  phenom¬ 
enon  more  familiar?  The  second  use  of  the  hypothesis  is  that  it  is 
possible  to  make  a  certain  supposition,  deduce  its  results  in  accordance 
with  known  principles,  and  then  compare  these  deduced  results  with  the 
observed  phenomena,  and  in  that  way  verify  this  supposition,  and  estab¬ 
lish  it  as  the  actual  cause  of  the  phenomena.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  this  is  considered  merely  a  convenience  by  Mill,  it  is  not  the  only 
way  in  which  the  cause  may  be  discovered,  in  fact  it  is  not  a  safe  way 
unless  the  verification  is  such  as  to  exclude  the  possibility  of  a  false 
law  leading  to  true  results.  But  it  is  a  shorter  method  than  the  one 


22 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


without  hypotheses  because  it  enables  one  to  do  without  the  first  step 
of  the  investigation  process,  the  induction  to  ascertain  the  law  of  the 
causes,  since  this  is  assumed  in  the  hypothesis  rather  than  being  proved 
by  a  complete  induction.  For  example,  it  is  possible  to  gather  together 
all  the  facts  about  whales,  and  from  the  vast  collection  read  out  some 
generalization  concerning  them;  but  it  is  a  shorter  process  to  guess  at 
this  generalization  and  then  see  whether  your  observations  are  in  harmony 
with  the  guess.  This  guess  or  supposition  enables  one  to  begin  an  investi¬ 
gation  by  assuming  a  possible  cause,  instead  of  by  discovering  this  possible 
cause  by  the  collection  and  analysis  of  numberless  single  instances. 
The  third  reason  that  he  considers  hypotheses  useful  is  that  they  are 
convenient  ways  of  manipulating  phenomena,  that  they  reduce  to  order 
a  confused  set  of  phenomena. 

But  in  another  part  of  his  logic,  Mill  admits  that  the  hypothesis  is 
not  only  convenient  and  useful,  but  even  absolutely  necessary  for  the 
development  of  science  as  we  have  it,  because  “  those  unobvious,  delicate, 
and  often  cumbrous  and  tedious  processes  of  experiment,  which  have 
thrown  most  light  upon  the  general  constitution  of  nature,  would  hardly 
ever  have  been  undertaken  by  the  persons  or  at  the  time  they  were,  un¬ 
less  it  had  seemed  to  depend  on  them  whether  some  general  doctrine  or 
theory  which  had  been  suggested,  but  not  yet  proved,  should  be  admitted 
or  not.”  However,  even  here  he  attempts  to  save  his  position  by  assert¬ 
ing  that  “it  is  abstractedly  possible  that  all  the  experiments  which  have 
been  tried  might  have  been  produced  by  the  mere  desire  to  ascertain 
what  would  happen  in  certain  circumstances,  without  any  previous 
conjecture  as  to  the  result.”1 

There  are  passages,  however,  where  Mill  admits  without  any  such 
reservation  the  absolute  necessity  of  hypotheses,  and,  what  is  more 
noteworthy,  abandons  entirely  the  theory  that  hypotheses  are  exclusively 
mental  and  shows  them  as  arising  from,  and  molded  by,  the  objective 
world,  and  necessary  because  of  their  ability  to  modify  that  world. 
Here  the  absolute  separation  between  mind  and  matter  is  transcended, 
the  facts  are  no  longer  complete  and  fixed  entities  given  to  a  passive 
mind,  but  are  incomplete  and  partial,  or  else  chaotic  and  confused 
complexes,  with  which  an  active  mind  must  work  to  suggest  those  changes 
and  modifications  which  are  necessary  to  complete  the  partiality  or  to 
introduce  order  in  the  confusion. 

This  final  step  in  Mill’s  recognition  of  the  place  of  the  hypothesis 
comes  when  he  recognizes  that  the  mind  must  deal  actively  with  things, 

1  Logic ,  Book  III,  chap,  xiv,  sec.  5. 


LOGICIANS  OF  KNOWLEDGE  DIRECTLY  FROM  THINGS 


23 


not  only  in  order  that  it  may  know  and  understand  these  things,  but  also 
in  order  that  it  may  use  them  in  action,  that  the  reason  the  mind  seeks 
to  know  causes,  to  investigate  hypotheses,  to  manipulate  ideas,  is  not 
merely  that  it  may  see  them  more  clearly  and  understand  them  more 
perfectly,  but  that  it  may  through  that  organism  with  which  it  is  one 
handle  the  objects  in  question  more  effectively,  manipulate  them  more 
successfully,  change  conditions  according  to  its  purposes.  That  is, 
Mill  points  out  that  by  mere  observation  we  get  one  infinitely  complex 
state  of  the  universe  followed  by  another  as  infinitely  complex.  These 
must  be  broken  up  and  analyzed  if  we  wish  to  find  out  “what  con¬ 
sequents,  in  nature,  are  invariably  connected  with  what  antecedents.” 
But  he  points  out  that  this  analysis  must  be  both  subjective  and  objective, 
must  deal  with  objects  as  well  as  with  ideas,  in  fact  that  the  only  purpose 
of  the  ideas  is  to  show  us  how  to  deal  with  things.  To  state  the  matter 
in  Mill’s  own  words:  “No  mere  contemplation  of  the  phenomena,  and 
partition  of  them  by  the  intellect  alone,  will  of  itself  accomplish  the  end 
we  have  now  in  view.”  To  determine  which  consequent  is  invariably 
connected  with  an  antecedent: 

We  must  endeavor  to  effect  a  separation  of  the  facts  from  one  another, 
not  in  our  minds  only,  but  in  nature.  The  mental  analysis,  however,  must 

take  place  first . The  only  object  of  the  mental  separation  is  to  suggest 

the  requisite  physical  separation,  so  that  we  may  either  accomplish  it  ourselves, 
or  seek  for  it  in  nature;  and  we  have  done  enough  when  we  have  carried  the 
subdivision  as  far  as  the  point  at  which  we  are  able  to  see  what  observations  or 
experiments  we  require.1 

One  of  the  chief  causes  of  Mill’s  greatness  is  his  inconsistency. 
He  is  willing  to  state  whatever  he  believes  to  be  true,  whether  his  system¬ 
atic  structure  can  account  for  it  or  not,  and  therefore  he  is  able  to  escape 
the  results  of  many  of  his  prejudices.  Thus,  although  he  never  really 
overcame  the  influence  of  the  assumption  that  the  mind  is  entirely 
subjective  and  that  its  theories  are  dangerous  to  truth,  although  he 
clung  persistently  to  his  hope  that  he  could  make  a  logic  of  things  free 
from  the  taint  of  mental  constructions,  nevertheless,  when  he  found  in 
his  analysis  of  actual  investigations  that  ideas  were  really  of  help  in 
solving  problems,  he  was  honest  enough  to  record  that  fact.  At  first 
he  was  influenced  by  his  prejudice  against  ideas  as  constructions  of 
a  purely  subjective  mind  to  attempt  to  save  his  position  by  the  contention 
that  these  ideas,  these  hypothetical  constructions,  were  humble  con¬ 
veniences,  short-cuts  to  the  truth,  and  that  any  knowledge  that  had 

*  Ibid.,  chap,  vii,  sec.  1. 


24 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


been  obtained  by  their  help  required  extra  careful  verification.  This  is 
the  explanation  of  his  second  position.  But  later  he  was  able  to  throw 
off  all  bondage  to  this  prejudice  against  the  “mind,”  and  to  recognize 
freely  that  ideas  are  not  only  subjective  but  also  objective,  that  hypoth¬ 
eses  are  not  only  ways  of  arranging  conceptions  but  also  ways  of  arranging 
physical  objects,  that  in  fact  the  only  reason  we  do  work  with  ideas  is 
that  we  can  more  conveniently  manipulate  them,  discover  their  implica¬ 
tions,  change  and  modify  them  more  easily,  because  as  ideas  they  are 
freer  and  have  fewer  relations,  and  that  later  we  may  use  the  results  of 
these  processes  in  dealing  with  those  objects  which  have  existence  for 
others  as  well  as  for  ourselves. 

Now  if  Mill  had  really  recognized  the  force  of  this  last  view  of  the 
hypothesis  it  would  have  made  over  his  whole  logic.  It  would  have 
necessitated  his  recognition  that  facts  come  to  the  mind,  not  fixed  and 
unambiguous,  but  rather  tentative  and  ambiguous,  asking  questions 
which  require  hypotheses  to  help  answer  them,  incomplete,  and  needing 
hypotheses  to  suggest  those  manipulations  which  can  complete  them. 
It  would  have  compelled  him  to  transcend  that  separation  between  the 
“mind”  and  the  world  and  thereby  to  overcome  the  prejudice  against 
hypotheses  as  those  conceptions  which  are  added  by  the  “mind”  to 
external  things.  It  would  have  necessitated  the  reconstruction  of  his 
ideal  of  knowledge  so  that  its  aim  would  have  been  not  the  beholding 
of  a  complete  and  finished  whole,  but  the  efficient  manipulation  of  specific 
objects;  as  he  puts  it  himself,  “the  only  object  of  the  mental  separation 
is  to  suggest  the  requisite  physical  separation.”  But  the  old  separation 
between  the  mind  and  the  world  is  too  firmly  intrenched  in  Mill’s  thought 
to  be  evicted  by  this  discovery  concerning  hypotheses,  and  his  ideal  of 
knowledge  is  too  thoroughly  one  with  that  of  the  rationalists  and  idealists 
to  be  easily  replaced  by  another.  For,  in  spite  of  his  empiricism,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  he  wishes  to  obtain  his  knowledge  directly  from  things 
alone,  the  kind  of  knowledge  Mill  desires  is  of  principles  which  will 
enable  him  to  predict  the  whole  prior  and  future  course  of  the  universe 
from  the  events  which  lie  before  him;  his  ideal  of  the  knowledge  of  the 
cause  of  a  phenomenon  is  not  that  which  will  enable  him  to  control  the 
phenomenon  either  theoretically  or  practically,  but  is  rather  the  sum 
total  of  all  the  antecedents  of  that  phenomenon,  the  collection  of  all 
the  circumstances,  both  positive  and  negative,  which  preceded  it  and 
without  which  it  would  not  have  happened,  in  other  words,  a  summary 
of  the  whole  prior  state  of  the  universe.  Mill  realized  that  such  a  com¬ 
plete  knowledge  could  never  be  reached  in  any  piecemeal  hypothetical 
fashion  and  so  this  motive  combined  with  his  main  motive  to  know  by 


LOGICIANS  OF  KNOWLEDGE  DIRECTLY  FROM  THINGS 


25 


means  of  things  alone  to  prevent  him  from  giving  an  adequate  place 
to  the  hypothesis  in  his  system,  although  he  does  give  such  a  good 
account  of  it. 

In  Bacon,  Locke,  and  Mill  we  have  a  group  of  logicians  who  reject 
the  hypothesis,  not  because  of  their  trust  in  deductive  and  mathematical 
systems,  but  because  of  their  trust  in  their  own  powers  of  observation, 
not  because  they  wished  to  deduce  a  system  from  mathematically 
absolute  first  principles,  but  because  they  wished  to  observe  actual  things 
without  prejudice.  They  felt  a  strong  objection  to  the  hypothesis 
because  they  thought  it  had  an  inevitable  tendency  to  make  them  judge 
the  case  before  the  evidence  was  all  in,  to  tempt  them  to  assert  the  theory 
without  examining  all  the  facts,  and  they  were  sure  that  any  such  bias 
and  prejudgment  was  sure  to  be  in  the  interests  of  the  dominant  party, 
to  be  derived  from  the  religious,  political,  and  moral  traditions  of  the 
past  and  to  plant  itself  in  firm  opposition  to  any  change  and  progress. 
It  seems  strange  to  find  tentative  and  experimental  ideas  rejected  from 
this  motive,  but  we  must  remember  that  they  were  rejected  as  “  mental,” 
as  creations  of  that  “mind”  which  was  the  guardian  of  innate  principles 
and  traditional  teachings,  and  not  as  specifically  experimental  and 
hypothetical.  They  were  so  afraid  that  the  “mind”  would  prejudice 
the  case  that  they  attempted  to  put  the  “mind”  out  of  court  altogether; 
they  were  so  afraid  of  old  fogy  ideas  that  they  refused  to  have  anything 
to  do  with  any  ideas  whatsoever.  They  tried  to  show  that  thinking 
can  be  done  entirely  in  terms  of  things,  that  conclusions  can  be  reached 
by  the  collection  of  enough  instances,  that  the  phenomena  themselves 
give  to  the  passive  mind  all  of  its  conceptions,  classifications,  and  ideas. 

So  long  as  they  insisted  on  rejecting  the  hypothesis  they  could  not 
give  an  adequate  account  of  the  thinking  which  actually  went  on,  they 
had  to  content  themselves  with  mere  collections  of  phenomena  with  no 
principle  of  selection  or  arrangement,  or  else  with  the  shuffling  and 
comparison  of  purely  subjective  ideas.  But  on  the  other  hand  they  could 
not  admit  hypotheses  without  making  radical  changes  in  their  whole 
systems  of  thought,  without  denying  that  separation  between  the 
“mind”  and  things  which  they  all  so  firmly  believed  in,  and  without,  in 
the  case  of  Locke  and  Mill  at  least,  changing  their  ideal  of  knowledge  as 
something  complete  and  finished  to  be  beheld,  not  to  be  worked  with. 
So  they  were  forced  either  to  reduce  knowing  to  a  mere  conjunction  or 
disjunction  of  subjective  ideas  as  Locke  did,  or  else  to  make  practical 
use  of  hypotheses  because  they  could  not  account  for  thought  without 
them,  but  to  refuse  them  a  place  in  their  logical  systems  because  it  was 
too  destructive  to  those  systems  to  admit  them. 


CHAPTER  III 


THOSE  LOGICIANS  WHO  REJECT  HYPOTHESES  BECAUSE 
THEY  DESIRE  A  COMPLETE  AND  FINISHED  SYSTEM  OF 
THOUGHT  WHICH  PROCEEDS  BY  STRICT  NECESSITY 

This  second  group  of  logicians  is  made  up  of  those  thinkers  who 
desire  most  of  all  to  obtain  certainty  and  universality,  who  are  above 
all  eager  to  establish  a  well-authenticated  system  of  knowledge.  Most 
of  them  have  been  greatly  influenced  by  the  method  of  mathematics 
and  all  of  them  feel  that  if  they  can  only  obtain  knowledge  which  has 
been  derived  by  strict  deduction  from  unquestionable  premises,  they 
will  have  something  which  can  withstand  all  the  assaults  of  doubt  and 
criticism.  The  characteristic  which  marks  all  of  these  thinkers  is  their 
passion  for  completeness  and  for  indubitable  certainty  and  their  convic¬ 
tion  that  this  can  be  attained  only  by  some  strictly  deductive  process. 
All  of  the  members  of  this  group  agree  that  the  ideal  of  knowledge  is  a 
conception  of  a  universal  order  which  comprehends  the  whole  world, 
is  an  ideal  of  a  complete  systematic  whole  from  which  no  smallest  circum¬ 
stance  is  lost  or  omitted.  None  of  the  rest,  with  the  possible  exception 
of  Holt,  are  as  naive  as  Descartes  in  the  assertion  that  the  only  way  to 
obtain  such  knowledge  is  by  deduction  from  unquestionable  premises; 
for  just  as  the  other  group  of  logicians,  whose  main  motive  was  to  obtain 
knowledge  straight  from  real  objects  in  order  that  it  might  apply  to 
the  actual  world,  also  had  as  their  ideal  this  same  kind  of  complete  and 
necessary  knowledge,  so  these  logicians  have  a  subordinate  but  still 
strong  desire  to  have  their  knowledge  apply  to  reality,  to  be  in  contact 
with  actual  objects.  They  employ,  therefore,  various  devices  to  avoid 
the  usual  barrenness  of  deduction  which  continually  appears  to  be 
unable  to  obtain  more  than  a  restatement  of  that  knowledge  which  was 
already  within  the  premises.  But  in  spite  of  this  suspicion  of  deduction 
and  the  consequent  attempts  to  introduce  induction,  to  get  something 
more  than  a  rearrangement  of  the  premises,  they  are  none  of  them 
willing  to  admit  information  gained  piecemeal  by  observation  and 
experiment,  because  they  realize  that  it  can  never  give  them  the  complete 
knowledge  which  they  desire;  they  will  not  accept  as  part  of  their  ideal 
of  knowledge  anything  obtained  by  limited  hypotheses  and  partial 
inquiries,  because  they  know  that  these  can  never  give  a  finished  and 
unified  system  of  truth. 


26 


LOGICIANS  OF  THOUGHT  BY  STRICT  NECESSITY 


27 


To  be  sure  they  all  admit  the  necessity  for  some  kind  of  practical, 
everyday,  working  knowledge;  they  admit  that  we  need  finite  and  partial 
accounts  of  the  world  for  our  business  and  science;  they  admit  that  we 
must  use  “  the  impure  and  uncertain  art  which  uses  the  false  rule  and  the 
false  circle  ....  if  any  of  us  is  ever  to  find  his  way  home.”1  To  this 
knowledge  hypotheses  may  well  belong;  they  help  to  limit  the  attention, 
select  data,  arrange  methods  of  pratical  procedure.  But  in  the  ideal  of 
knowledge,  in  the  conception  of  a  universal  order  comprehending  the 
whole  world,  in  the  concrete  universal  revealing  itself  in  its  own  differences, 
in  the  principles  of  order  arranging  the  facts  to  which  they  apply  with 
strict  deductive  powers,  the  particularity  and  partiality  of  the  hypothesis 
cannot  be  other  than  a  hindrance  and  an  impertinence,  and  it  is  there¬ 
fore  denied  any  place  at  all  in  this  complete  knowledge  which  is  their 
ideal. 

If  these  logicians  were  able  to  make  room  in  their  complete  systems, 
which  proceed  by  strict  necessity,  for  that  kind  of  thought  which  does 
enable  us  to  find  our  way  home,  which  does  show  us  how  to  mend  bridges 
and  prevent  diseases,  then  we  should  have  to  admit  that  they  have  a 
right  to  abandon  hypotheses.  It  is  not  that  their  logic  ought  to  perform 
those  actual  tasks,  that  is  the  province  of  the  special  sciences;  but  it 
ought  to  give  an  account  of  a  kind  of  thought  that  is  able  to  perform 
them,  not  one  that  is  powerless  before  them.  If  they  cannot  give  such 
an  account  of  thought,  if  they  are  forced  to  reject  all  practical  accomplish¬ 
ments  and  scientific  researches  as  too  humble  and  unworthy  to  play  any 
part  in  their  complete  system,  then  we  have  a  right  to  urge  that  this 
system  is  inadequate.  In  trying  to  attain  a  thought  which  has  a  nobler 
mission  than  solving  practical  or  scientific  problems  they  have  lost  that 
thought  which  can  make  fruitful  connection  with  facts. 

Kant  is  a  perfect  example  of  the  logician  who  cares  so  much  for  the 
indubitable  certainty  of  knowledge  that  he  is  willing  to  reject  hypotheses 
as  lacking  in  these  essential  attributes  of  universality  and  necessity,  even 
though  this  forces  him  to  exclude  from  completely  logical  procedure  the 
only  type  of  thinking  which  he  himself  considers  capable  of  solving 
specific  problems.  For  Kant  does  contend  that  the  hypothetical  method 
is  an  absolute  necessity  in  the  solution  of  any  specific  problems,  in  any 
of  our  dealings  with  nature,  in  any  of  the  investigations  of  chemistry, 
biology,  geology,  or  astronomy,  and  that  this  is  a  necessity  which  springs 
not  from  the  finitude  and  incompleteness  of  our  knowledge,  but  from  the 
nature  of  the  problems  themselves.  Thus  he  says  in  his  Logic  that  he 


1  Plato  Philebus  62. 


28 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


considers  some  kind  of  a  “provisional  plan”  or  “provisional  judgment” 
indispensable  to  any  inquiry,  discovery,  or  invention,  because  it  must  be 
present  to  limit  the  field  of  inquiry,  for  “otherwise  our  thoughts  go  on  at 
random.”1  At  the  close  of  the  Logic  he  states  even  more  definitely  that 
the  hypothesis  is  a  fundamental  necessity  of  some  types  of  investigation 
and  not  merely  a  temporary  makeshift  due  to  our  human  weaknesses. 
He  states:  “There  are  sciences  which  permit  no  hypotheses;  as,  for 
example,  mathematics  and  metaphysics.  But  in  dealing  with  nature 
they  are  useful  and  indispensable.”2  Thus  in  spite  of  his  predominant 
interest  in  the  general  conditions  of  all  experience,  which  conditions  he 
deduces  a  priori,  Kant  never  forgets  the  fact  that  the  specific  problems 
of  science  cannot  be  solved  by  any  application  of  this  a  priori  and  uni¬ 
versal  knowledge,  but  must  be  empirically  and  experimentally  deter¬ 
mined,  and  that  for  this  process  hypotheses  are  necessary.3 

So  far  Kant  seems  to  have  a  place  for  the  hypothesis  in  his  logic, 
but  then,  to  our  surprise,  we  find  that,  although  he  admits  the  indis¬ 
pensability  of  the  hypothetical  method  in  dealing  with  all  specific 
problems,  he  nevertheless  rejects  this  method  entirely  from  true  logical 
thinking.  It  is  a  necessity  for  science,  a  necessity  for  practical  life, 
but  it  has  no  place  in  logic.  A  truly  logical  method  must  possess  at 
every  step  universality  and  necessity  and  there  is  no  universality  or 
necessity  in  a  hypothesis.  For  this  reason  we  find  Kant  stating  in 
the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason:  “Everything  looking  like  an  hypothesis  is 
contraband,”  and,  “As  regards  certitude,  I  have  fully  convinced  myself 
that,  in  the  sphere  of  thought,  opinion  is  perfectly  inadmissible,  and  that 
everything  which  bears  the  least  semblance  of  an  hypothesis  must  be 
excluded  as  of  no  value  in  such  discussions.”4  Even  in  his  Dreams  of  a 
Spirit-Seer  Illustrated  by  Dreams  of  Metaphysics ,  Kant  has  a  section  which 
implies,  though  it  does  not  explicitly  state,  the  inferior  position  to  which 
he  relegated  the  hypothesis,  in  spite  of  its  usefulness.  He  says: 

All  such  opinions,  as  those  concerning  the  manner  in  which  the  soul  moves 
my  body,  or  is  related  to  other  beings,  now  or  in  future,  can  never  be  anything 
more  than  fictions.  And  they  are  far  from  having  even  that  value  which 
fictions  of  science,  called  hypotheses,  have.5 

1  Sec.  9. 

2  “Es  gibtWissenschaften,  die  keineHypothesen  erlauben;  wie  z.b.  die  Mathematik 
und  Metaphysik.  Aber  in  der  Naturlehre  sind  sie  niitzlich  und  unentbehrlich” 
(Logic,  sec.  10). 

3  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  sec.  26. 

4  Preface,  p.  xxv  (Max  Muller  Edition). 

s  Dreams  of  a  Spirit-Seer,  Part  II,  chap.  iii. 


LOGICIANS  OF  THOUGHT  BY  STRICT  NECESSITY 


29 


Kant’s  position  concerning  the  hypothesis  may  be  summarized  thus: 
Hypotheses  are  absolutely  necessary  to  the  determination  of  special 
laws  which  can  never  be  deduced  from  the  categories,  and  are  indis¬ 
pensable  to  those  special  inquiries  and  investigations  which  are  found  in 
such  sciences  as  chemistry,  physics,  biology,  and  astronomy.  Neverthe¬ 
less,  the  hypothetical  method  can  never  give  apodictic  certainty  but 
only  probability.  Logic,  however,  is  limited  by  Kant  to  that  which 
has  universality  and  necessity.  Therefore,  the  hypothetical  method, 
though  useful  and  even  indispensable,  has  no  rightful  place  in  logical 
thinking.1 

Now  what  is  the  meaning  of  Kant’s  entire  exclusion  from  the  province 
of  logic  of  that  hypothetical  method  which  he  still  considers  necessary  for 
science  or  for  any  understanding  of  specific  objects  and  events  ?  It  is  not 
in  the  least  correct  to  state  that  Kant  believes  that  special  laws  and  spe¬ 
cial  inquiries  are  wholly  unrelated  to,  and  wholly  unaffected  by,  his  logic, 
because  Kant  considers  that  all  these  special  laws  and  special  inquiries 
must  be  subject  to  the  categories  of  logic  though  they  cannot  be  com¬ 
pletely  derived  from  these  categories.  All  particular  investigations  are 
therefore  dependent  on  logic,  inasmuch  as  the  categories  of  logic  deter¬ 
mine  the  general  conditions  under  which  they  can  be  carried  on.  Accord¬ 
ing  to  Kant  the  only  way  in  which  we  can  ever  know  that  a  particular 
question,  a  specific  problem,  concerns  anything  objective,  anything  more 
than  an  affection  of  our  own  subjectivity,  is  that  it  can  be  grounded  in 
these  universal  categories  of  logic;  the  only  basis  for  the  objectivity 
of  the  phenomena  about  which  we  frame  our  hypotheses  is  to  be  found 
in  the  a  priori  concepts  of  logic.  We  should  have  only  bare  impressions 
of  sense,  mere  “judgments  of  perception,”  were  it  not  for  the  guidance 
of  the  categories  and  the  unifying  activity  of  the  conscious  self.  We  can 
merely  judge  that  one  particular  thing  or  event  is  perceived  by  us  here 
and  now  as  connected  with  some  other  particular  thing  or  event,  until 
we  gain  some  logical  basis  which  assures  us  of  the  possibility  of  an  objec¬ 
tive  connection  of  these  things  or  events  independent  of  our  perceptions. 
As  Caird  says: 

Without  synthesis  the  consciousness  to  which  impressions  of  sense  could 
give  rise  would  be  only  a  scattered  and  unconnected  consciousness,  and  not 

1  There  is  the  following  suggestion  in  the  Logic,  sec.  9:  “Such  judgments,  then, 
have  their  use,  and  there  might  even  be  given  rules  how  to  form  provisional  judgments.” 
But  it  seems  to  me  that  this  does  not  in  the  least  imply  that  hypotheses  are  an  integral 
part  of  a  complete  logic,  but  merely  that  some  practical  and  empirical  rules  for  the 
formation  and  testing  of  these  useful  instruments  of  investigation  might  well  be 
included. 


30 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


the  consciousness  of  “Nature,”  as  a  system  of  permanent  objects  acting  in 
definite  ways  on  each  other.  In  fact,  they  could  give  rise  to  no  objective 
consciousness  at  all.  On  the  other  hand,  Kant  maintains  that  it  is  possible 
to  explain  that  consciousness  by  the  aid  of  a  synthetic  activity  of  mind,  guided 
by  the  categories.1 

Thus  Kant’s  logic  is  intimately  connected  with  the  solution  of  special 
problems  by  the  hypothetical  method,  because  that  logic  finds  an  explana¬ 
tion  and  a  justification  for  the  objectivity  of  the  things  and  events 
with  which  these  problems  deal,  a  rational  basis  for  that  synthetic 
activity  which  alone  makes  possible  the  “systems  of  permanent  objects 
acting  in  definite  ways  on  each  other”  with  which  we  must  necessarily 
deal  when  we  seek  to  solve  specific  problems.  So  for  Kant  the  problem 
of  logic  is  that  of  showing  that  there  must  be  some  a  priori  basis  for  our 
most  fragmentary  particular  experiences,  and  that  we  cannot  build  up 
this  a  priori  basis  from  our  particular  experiences  because  these  a  priori 
universals  are  conditions  which  are  necessary  to  the  occurrence  of  those 
particular  experiences  out  of  which  they  would  be  formed.  Therefore, 
no  specific  investigations  could  be  carried  on,  there  would  be  no  percep¬ 
tions  of  an  objective  world  which  the  subject  could  investigate,  were  it 
not  for  those  universals  which  it  is  the  task  of  Kant’s  logic  to  criticize 
and  establish. 

But  although  the  universal  laws  of  experience  which  are  the  material 
of  logic  thus  give  the  necessary  basis  for  any  particular  investigations, 
they  can  never  of  themselves  afford  a  complete  answer  to  these  inquiries. 
As  Kant  states  it  in  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason:  “  Special  laws,  therefore, 
as  they  refer  to  phenomena  which  are  empirically  determined,  cannot  be 
completely  derived  from  the  categories,  although  they  are  all  subject 
to  them.”2  All  specific  problems  must  arise  and  must  be  solved  according 
to  these  a  priori  conditions,  but  the  solution  of  one  of  these  specific 
problems  can  never  be  derived  from  these  general  conditions.  For  this 
determination  of  special  laws,  for  this  actual  solution  of  particular  prob¬ 
lems,  the  hypothetical  method  is  necessary,  and  yet  this  method,  because 
it  lacks  universality  and  necessity,  must  always  remain  for  Kant  a  logical 
weakness,  must  always  lack  the  warrant  of  true  logical  procedure.  The 
determination  of  special  laws,  the  special  investigations  of  science  and  of 
common  sense,  are  then  partly  related  to  Kant’s  logic  and  partly  excluded 
from  it.  They  are  related  to  it  in  so  far  as  they  receive  from  its  concepts 
the  basis  for  an  objective  world  to  which  they  can  refer;  they  are  excluded 

1  Edward  Caird,  The  Critical  Philosophy  of  Immanuel  Kant,  I,  349. 

2  Sec.  26. 


LOGICIANS  OF  THOUGHT  BY  STRICT  NECESSITY 


31 


from  it  in  so  far  as  they  must  necessarily  be  carried  on  by  methods 
which  lack  universality,  and  are  therefore  never  truly  logical.  This 
must  not  be  understood  as  a  mere  statement  that  Kant’s  logic  does  not 
itself  answer  any  specific  problems  of  science  or  of  everyday  life.  Such 
is  not  the  province  of  logic.  But  Kant  specifically  rejects  from  logic  the 
only  method  of  thinking  which  he  himself  considers  fitted  to  solve  these 
problems.  The  result  is  that  whenever  the  subject  is  dealing  with  a 
specific  problem  he  must  always  proceed  by  a  method  which  lacks  all 
logical  warrant,  and  is  merely  a  psychological  makeshift,  even  though  it 
is  granted  to  be  an  indispensable  makeshift. 

The  spirit  of  Hegel’s  account  of  thought  seems  at  first  sight  very  fa¬ 
vorable  to  procedure  by  hypothesis.  Hegel  attempts  to  prove  that  his , 
categories  are  intrinsically  related  to  their  material  by  showing  how  they 
evolve,  how  they  unroll  themselves;  he  tries  to  show  that  they  are  merely 
progressive  aspects  of  the  actual  objects  as  they  come  to  be  known,  and 
are  therefore  intrinsic,  not  applied  from  without.  The  evolution  of  the 
categories  is  the  inevitable  result  of  an  attempt  to  understand  an  actual 
object  by  bringing  it  entirely  under  one  category,  explaining  it  wholly 
by  one  formula,  which  attempt  immediately  calls  attention  to  those 
opposite  characteristics  which  cannot  be  thus  accounted  for,  whereupon 
the  reactionary  attempt  is  made  to  explain  this  object  by  exclusive 
reference  to  this  opposite  category,  that  is,  to  the  opposite  aspect  of  the 
object.  Finally  the  realization  comes  that  a  complete  account  must 
unite  both  aspects,  and  thus  a  third  category  arises,  that  is,  a  third  form 
of  understanding  the  object  which  includes  both  characteristics.  So 
Hegel’s  categories  are  not  external  forms  applied  to  the  material  from  the 
outside,  but  are  the  aspects  of  the  objects  themselves,  as  they  become 
progressively  better  known.  Now  so  far  in  the  account  there  is  no  reason 
why  some  of  the  categories  might  not  well  be  tentative  and  hypothetical; 
in  fact  it  seems  quite  reasonable  that  as  the  object  comes  to  be  better 
known  certain  aspects  should  appear  first  as  hypothetical  ideas  which 
can  be  more  easily  manipulated  than  the  object  itself  and  which  suggest 
criticisms  and  reconstructions  of  that  object. 

But  unfortunately  Hegel,  too,  was  eager  to  construct  a  completed 
system,  to  have  a  completely  realized  rationality.  He  was  so  anxious 
to  show  that  this  rational  order  is  not  a  mere  ideal,  not  a  mere  ought-to-be 
or  is-going- to-be,  that  he  made  it  into  an  already  realized  world-order; 
he  was  not  content  to  hold  that  it  is  realizable,  that  it  is  the  work  of 
that  vital  and  fruitful  connection  between  thinking  and  things  which  he 
posits,  to  realize  this  rationality,  but  instead  he  made  it  already  completely 


32 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


realized.  There  are  two  historical  conditions  which  account  for  Hegel’s 
desertion  of  his  principle  that  an  account  of  thought  is  an  account  of 
the  progressive  aspects  of  objective  reality  as  it  comes  to  be  rationalized 
and  his  assertion  in  direct  contradiction  to  this,  that  rationality  is  already 
accomplished  as  well  as  being  accomplished,  that  a  completely  rationalized 
state  of  the  objective  world  is  eternally  and  timelessly  realized.  One  is 
the  state  of  science  at  that  time.  This  was  so  fragmentary  and  so  incom¬ 
plete  that  it  offered  little  encouragement  to  the  belief  that  thought 
could  actually  criticize  and  reconstruct  the  objective  world,  and  afforded 
much  excuse  for  Hegel’s  complaint  of  the  unwarranted  postulates  and 
hypothetical  constructions  of  science  and  its  lack  of  the  form  of  necessity. 
There  really  is  so  much  justification  in  the  state  of  science  for  his  lack  of 
faith  in  the  power  of  the  individual’s  thought  and  investigation  to 
rationalize  reality,  that  it  is  probably  much  fairer  to  emphasize  the  faith 
Hegel  did  show  in  asserting  that  thought  could  deal  vitally  with  the 
world — could  rationalize  it — rather  than  to  put  the  stress  upon  the  fact 
that  he  feared  to  let  the  realization  of  this  rationalization  by  thought 
depend  on  those  poor  finite  minds  which  were  making  such  a  failure  of 
science,  and  let  it  rest  instead  on  the  eternal  achievement  of  this  ration¬ 
ality  in  the  timeless  Infinite.  Probably  in  that  state  of  science  no 
philosopher  could  have  dared  to  assert  that  the  objective  world  is  being 
progressively  rationalized  by  the  thinking  of  individuals,  and  the  most 
any  philosopher  could  do  was  to  represent  this  rationality  as  realized 
in  the  world-order  by  means  of  an  Absolute  Thought.  The  other 
historical  influence  mentioned  is  found  in  the  state  of  Germany  at  that 
time.  For  she  was  being  torn  by  many  individual  principalities  each 
struggling  for  power,  she  was  suffering  from  a  lack  of  any  strong  central 
system  able  to  compel  her  individual  princes  to  cease  their  destructive 
strife  and  co-operate  with  each  other.  This  intense  need  for  some  strong 
system  of  government,  a  need  which  impelled  the  Germans  to  seek 
the  strongest  and  most  stable  political  system  they  could  devise,  must 
have  influenced  Hegel  in  his  desire  for  a  system  which  could  be  absolutely 
depended  on,  which  was  no  shadowy  ideal  to  be  worked  for  and  perhaps 
lost,  but  a  completely  realized  reality.  He  had  seen  so  much  of  uncer¬ 
tainty  and  incompleteness  and  individuality  in  the  fields  of  science  and 
politics,  that  his  ideal  became  perfect  a  priori  certainty,  absolute  and 
changeless  completeness. 

But  this  conviction  that  the  objective  world-order  is  completely 
rationalized,  that  the  rational  is  the  real,  influences  him  to  give  an 
account  of  thought  which  makes  it  impossible  for  this  thought  to  come 


LOGICIANS  OF  THOUGHT  BY  STRICT  NECESSITY 


33 


into  that  fruitful  connection  with  the  objective  world  which  he  has 
declared  to  exist.  In  the  first  place  it  makes  him  assert  that  the 
categories  of  thought  are  not  something  which  the  individual  is  working 
out  in  his  progressive  understanding  of  things,  nor  even  something  which 
the  Absolute  is  working  out,  but  are  eternally  realized  and  finished, 
completely  fixed  and  changeless.  It  is  this  ideal  of  knowledge  as  already 
completely  rationalized  which  prevents  Hegel  from  realizing  that  there 
can  be  new  categories,  whereas  otherwise  he  would  surely  have  recognized 
that,  since  the  categories  are  the  forms  which  the  objects  take  as  they 
become  better  understood,  therefore  they  will  continually  take  new  forms 
as  men  continue  to  investigate  and  inquire. 

In  the  second  place,  this  ideal  of  a  complete  and  finished  system 
makes  Hegel  attempt  to  manage  his  deduction  of  the  categories  by  sheer 
intellectual  necessity,  not  by  the  necessity  of  dealing  with  specific’ 
subject-matter  which  needs  to  be  better  understood.  That  this  is  the 
reason  his  deduction  limps  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  it  generally 
moves  easily  within  the  sets  of  three  terms,  where  he  almost  always 
makes  use  of  specific  object-material  to  show  how  one  category  passes 
over  into  its  Other,  but  breaks  down  where  he  passes  from  one  triad  to 
another,  where  he  seldom  makes  use  of  any  specific  material  but  merely 
states  that  it  is  characteristic  of  thought  to  pass  on  to  another  category 
that  is  not  yet  complete  because  it  has  not  yet  attained  the  Notion. 
It  is  also  in  the  interests  of  this  complete  system  that  he  asserts  that  all 
the  categories  are  finally  taken  up  into  one  all-inclusive  category.  Heed¬ 
less  of  the  fact  that  he  has  taught  us  that  it  is  the  very  nature  of  a  cate¬ 
gory  to  be  relative,  that  every  attempt  to  work  one  category  exclusively 
always  causes  it  to  pass  over  into  its  Other,  he  here  introduces  a  category 
which  is  Absolute,  which  has  no  Other. 

Thirdly,  if  the  objective  world  is  completely  rationalized,  if  it  does 
not  depend  upon  our  feeble  finite  efforts  but  is  timelessly  and  eternally 
realized,  then  there  can  be  no  errors  and  there  can  also  be  no  problems. 
For,  since  thought  has  been  made  the  whole  method  of  the  world’s 
progress,  that  thought  cannot  possibly  fail,  and  therefore  there  can  be 
no  error.  Since  the  rational  is  already  the  real,  there  is  nothing  still 
unrationalized  from  which  problems  can  arise,  there  is  no  work  left  for 
thought  to  do  for  there  is  nothing  unrationalized  left  for  it  to  deal  with. 
The  work  of  thought  is  the  criticism  and  reconstruction  of  the  objective 
world;  now  if  that  world  is  already  a  perfect  and  rational  actuality, 
there  is  no  function  left  for  thought  to  perform.  There  is  no  place  left 
for  a  reconstructive  thought  which  has  fruitful  connections  with  the 


34 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


objective  world,  but  only  for  a  thought  which  strives  to  rid  itself  of  its 
illusions,  drag  the  bandages  from  its  eyes,  and  gaze  upon  this  perfect, 
fixed,  eternal  universe. 

In  the  fourth  place  this  ideal  of  completeness  makes  Hegel  despise 
the  incomplete  and  fragmentary  character  of  all  practical  and  scientific 
investigations.  Thus  he  objects  to  all  finite  judgments  because  of  their 
limitation,  because  they  can  never  express  the  whole  experience  to  be 
had  of  the  object  in  question,  and  because  his  ideal  of  thought  demands 
such  complete  expression.  Although  he  recognizes  the  importance  of 
purpose,  this  ideal  of  completeness  makes  him  shun  all  specific  finite 
purposes  and  consider  only  the  all-inclusive  cosmic  Purpose.  Of  the 
finite,  individual  purpose  he  says  that  its  behavior  is  the  opposite  from 
Truth  since  it  attempts  to  mold  “  the  world  it  finds  before  it  into  a  shape 
conformable  to  its  purposed  End.”1  Particularly  are  hypotheses  subject 
to  this  charge  of  finitude  and  incompleteness,  because  they  are  all  limited 
and  specific,  because  they  never  deal  with  all  aspects  of  the  subject 
and  because  they  proceed  from  specific  not  cosmic  purposes.  Thus  it 
is  considered  a  reproach  to  science  that  it  proceeds  lamely  by  hypotheses 
and  postulates  whereas  philosophy  proceeds  by  necessity,  because  its 
truths  are  not  deduced  from  any  well-authenticated  principles  but  are 
merely  assumed.  This  account  of  thought  makes  impossible  any  fruitful 
connection  between  thought  and  the  world  because  it  makes  the  forms 
of  thought  so  fixed  and  so  complete  that  they  cannot  be  hypothetically 
or  tentatively  applied,  and  makes  the  world  so  completely  rationalized 
that  it  needs  no  changes  which  thought  might  suggest. 

Now  any  good  Hegelian  would  hasten  at  once  to  answer  these  charges 
thus: 

All  of  your  difficulties  and  inconsistencies  arise  from  the  fact  that  you  do 
not  recognize  the  timeless  nature  of  these  categories;  you  persist  in  assuming  that 
the  deduction  of  these  categories  has  been  finished  at  some  definite  time,  that 
there  is  some  specific  moment  at  which  the  rationalization  of  the  universe 
would  be  realized.  That  is  not  what  Hegel  means.  He  means  that  the 
deduction  of  the  categories  has  no  beginning  or  end  but  is  a  timeless  reality, 
that  the  rationalization  of  the  world  is  realized  not  in  any  one  finite  period  of 
time  but  in  the  all-inclusive  and  timeless  sphere  of  the  Infinite. 

To  meet  the  assertion  that  this  completely  rationalized  world-order 
leaves  no  work  for  thought  to  do,  they  would  point  out  many  passages 
in  which  Hegel  specifically  urges  that  this  rationality  must  be  produced 
in  finite  minds,  that  it  must  be  worked  out  in  the  thought  of  individual 

1  Logic ,  chap,  ix,  sec.  232. 


LOGICIANS  OF  THOUGHT  BY  STRICT  NECESSITY 


35 


men.  To  answer  the  charge  that  Hegel  has  ignored  any  finite  aspect 
or  value,  that  he  has  rejected  any  finite  judgment,  purpose,  or  hypothesis, 
they  would  point  out  that  Hegel  never  rejected  anything,  that  his 
system  was  all-inclusive,  that  he  never  ignored  any  of  these  elements 
but  simply  asserted  that  their  finite  and  partial  character  was  not  final, 
that  they  should  transcend  these  limitations  and  be  included  in  a  complete 
whole. 

But  this  is  not  an  answer  to  the  specific  charge  here  urged;  for 
this  claim  is  not  that  it  is  impossible  to  reconcile  the  timeless  contempla¬ 
tion  of  a  completely  rationalized  world  with  the  need  for  active  criticism 
and  reconstruction  of  that  world  by  an  individual  in  time;  but  rather 
that  the  method  of  thought  here  described,  the  categories  here  deduced, 
can  function  only  in  that  timeless  contemplation  of  truth  already  known, 
and  are  of  no  use  at  all  in  the  learning  of  new  truth.  The  question  here 
is  not  how  a  knowledge  that  is  already  complete  can  need  the  necessarily 
imperfect  efforts  of  a  finite  individual  to  reproduce  it,  nor  how  a  ration¬ 
ality  which  is  already  accomplished  can  need  to  be  produced  in  particular 
minds;  but  rather  how  the  deductive  necessity  and  fixed  categories  can 
ever  be  of  use  in  dealing  with  new  specific  material.  Hegel  has  tied  up 
all  the  categories  of  thought,  all  the  tools  for  knowing,  with  an  eternally 
and  completely  rationalized  world,  and  has  left  the  thinker  and  investi¬ 
gator  no  alterable  or  dynamic  categories  with  which  to  accomplish  that 
rationalizing  of  the  world  which  he  also  considers  necessary.  It  is  not 
that  Hegel  ignores  hypotheses,  and  questions,  and  problems,  and  tentative 
ideas,  for  it  is  well  understood  that  he  allows  them  to  transcend  their 
limitations  and  become  integral  parts  of  one  all-inclusive  unity.  It  is 
that  when  they  are  thus  included  in  a  complete  and  perfect  whole,  they 
lose  their  essential  characters,  they  cease  to  be  hypotheses  and  questions 
and  problems  and  tentative  ideas.  It  is  not  that  Hegel  refuses  to  include 
our  active,  constructive  thought,  but  that  when  he  does  include  it,  it 
ceases  to  be  the  same  kind  of  thought;  it  ceases  to  be  of  any  use  in 
criticizing  or  reconstructing  the  actual  objects  of  our  practical  and 
scientific  world.  So,  in  spite  of  Hegel’s  sincere  attempts  to  give  us  a 
thought  which  is  not  merely  mental  and  external  but  is  intrinsically 
connected  with  things,  in  spite  of  his  promise  to  give  us  an  evolution  of 
the  categories  which  is  thoroughly  objective,  which  is  really  a  life-history 
of  objects  as  they  become  more  completely  understood,  under  the 
influence  of  his  desire  for  a  rationality  which  is  already  completely 
realized  in  the  objective  world,  he  changes  this  to  a  type  of  thought 
which  is  inadequate  to  our  practical  and  scientific  needs. 


36 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


Bosanquet’s  Logic  is  a  splendid  illustration  of  this  fact  that  nothing 
tentative  and  hypothetical  can  be  taken  up  into  a  completed  system 
without  thereby  losing  its  tentative  and  hypothetical  character.  For 
Bosanquet  claims  in  true  Hegelian  style  that  the  world  is  already  com¬ 
pletely  rationalized  and  systematized,  and  that  the  only  adequate 
knowledge  is  of  a  complete  and  finished  whole  from  the  nature  of  which 
all  particulars  can  be  inferred  with  strict  logical  necessity.  Therefore, 
although  he  presents  a  complete  scientific  account  of  induction,  in  which 
hypothesis  is  present  from  the  very  first  stage,  enumerative  induction, 
to  the  last  stage,  perceptive  analysis,  with  real,  full-grown  laboratory 
methods,  he  no  sooner  finishes  this  account  of  induction  than  he  declares 
that  real  inference  is  not  managed  in  this  way,  that  true  knowledge 
can  never  be  obtained  by  this  piecemeal  work  of  induction,  of  procedure 
by  hypothesis.  For  he  claims  that  any  valid  information  about  a 
particular  must  be  obtained,  not  from  fragmentary  and  hypothetical 
inquiries,  but  from  such  an  insight  into  the  whole  system  of  reality  that 
the  nature  of  this  particular  can  be  inferred  from  the  part  which  it  plays 
in  the  whole. 

I  hope  to  show  that  Bosanquet’s  reasons  for  regarding  hypotheses 
as  unimportant,  incomplete,  and  fragmentary,  are  based  on  certain 
conceptions  of  inference,  knowledge,  and  truth  which  cannot  find  place 
in  an  adequate  account  of  thought  because  they  demand  that  thought 
shall  begin  at  a  point  where  the  system  of  reality  is  already  so  completely 
known  that  the  function  of  each  particular  within  it  is  unambiguously 
perceived,  that  is,  that  thought  shall  begin  at  the  point  where  everything 
is  already  completely  known. 

These  are  the  main  reasons  for  Bosanquet’s  exclusion  of  induction 
and  procedure  by  hypotheses  from  completely  logical  thought: 

i.  He  has  defined  inference  as  the  operation  of  a  universal  or  a  real 
identity,  a  process  which  depends  on  such  a  grasp  of  the  nature  of  a 
certain  whole  that  we  dare  infer  that  the  parts  will  be  of  such  and  such 
a  nature  because  otherwise  they  could  not  perform  their  respective 
functions  in  the  whole.  Inference  must  always  begin  with  a  whole  or 
a  universal  and  proceed  by  use  of  only  those  particulars  which  are  made 
necessary  by  the  nature  of  this  universal.  We  must  never  infer  from  one 
particular  directly  to  another  particular,  but  must  always  make  our 
inferences  from  direct  reference  to  the  nature  of  the  whole  or  universal 
of  which  they  are  particulars.  Now  it  is  very  plain  that  if  this  be 
inference,  then  Bosanquet  is  right  in  asserting  that  induction  is  not  a 
species  of  inference.  For  the  very  point  about  induction  is  that  you 


LOGICIANS  OF  THOUGHT  BY  STRICT  NECESSITY 


37 


do  not  know  the  nature  of  the  universal  but  are  trying  to  discover  that 
nature,  that  you  do  not  draw  your  conclusions  because  of  their  necessary 
connection  with  a  universal,  but  use  hypotheses,  analogy,  enumeration, 
observation,  and  experiment  to  determine  what  is  the  nature  of  the  uni¬ 
versal  in  question.  Thus,  if  inference  is  to  be  limited  to  the  necessary 
and  invariable  operation  of  an  already  known  universal,  it  is  correct  for 
Bosanquet  to  say  of  induction:  “It  has  not  ....  for  its  differentia 
any  peculiar  nature  in  the  universal  which  carries  the  conclusion.  It  is 
consequently  ....  a  transient  and  external  characteristic  of  inference.”1 

2.  Inference  depends  entirely  on  the  necessary  connections  of  the 
parts  of  a  coherent  system.  This  coherent  system  could  be  discovered 
in  many  possible  ways,  for  it  has  many  interconnected  particulars,  and , 
investigation  of  any  one  of  them  might  lead  the  observer  to  the  discovery 
of  the  whole  system;  it  depends  entirely  on  chance  just  which  one  of 
these  parts  comes  to  the  notice  of  an  individual  observer,  and,  therefore, 
the  method  of  induction  which  he  follows  is  entirely  accidental.  So 
induction,  or  procedure  by  hypothesis,  is  merely  the  method  which 
happened  to  be  adopted  to  discover  certain  necessary  connections  of 
particulars  under  a  universal;  it  is  only  the  collection  of  observations 
and  experiments  which  did  in  fact  disclose  a  coherent  system  to  a  given 
thinker.  Of  course  some  such  observation  and  experiments  had  to  be 
used  to  discover  this  system,  but  many  different  ones  might  have  been 
employed,  and  it  is  entirely  indifferent  just  which  were  actually  used. 
Thus  he  says: 

Its  Inductive  character  belongs  exclusively  to  the  process  of  discovery, 
and  depends  on  the  relation  between  the  elements  of  the  content  and  the 
qualification  of  reality  from  which  the  process  of  cognition  starts.  Inferential 
connection  is  one,  and  is  necessary  and  invariable;  but  the  points  at  which 
a  single  and  coherent  system  may  be  in  contact  with  the  real  world  as  known 

to  an  individual  cognitive  subject  are  infinitely  various . Inductive 

proof  rests,  like  all  Inference,  on  systematic  and  necessary  connection  of  content. 
How  many  observations,  what  experiments,  how  many,  and  how  favorable 
conjunctions  of  phenomena,  may  be  needed  to  describe  the  connection  to  us, 
is,  as  Aristotle  implied  in  the  Posterior  Analytics,  theoretically  indifferent.2 

3.  The  third  reason  for  rejecting  induction  and  particularly  for 
rejecting  procedure  by  hypothesis,  is  that  any  hypothesis  limits  the 
investigation  to  one  particular  question,  whereas  Bosanquet’s  conception 
of  true  knowledge  is  that  it  must  be  complete  and  any  limitation  of  knowl¬ 
edge  necessarily  interferes  with  its  truth.3  Truth  must  be  whole  and 


1  Logic,  II,  1 7 1. 


2  Ibid. 


iIbid .,  267. 


38 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


complete;  it  can  never  be  tested  by  definitely  limited  investigations, 
but  only  by  the  consequences  of  its  own  greater  completeness.  The 
following  quotation  shows  Bosanquet’s  view  on  this  matter: 

No  history  of  opinion,  no  formation  of  a  platform,  no  idiosyncrasies  of 
mental  organization,  can  come  into  court  when  the  question  of  truth  is  raised. 
Then  we  have  to  do  with  nothing  but  the  systematic  necessity  of  knowledge 
and  the  fact  that  fuller  cognition  can  compel  every  false  judgment  to  expose 
itself  as  a  flat  self-contradiction.1 

This  seems  to  assert  that  any  guidance  of  attention,  any  examination  of 
one  part  of  the  system  where  we  might  expect  a  contradiction  to  lie, 
any  effort  actively  to  examine  or  deal  with  reality  is  dangerous.  Instead, 
we  must  be  passive  spectators  while  this  system  of  reality  unfolds  and 
develops  itself,  and  when  the  whole  is  perfectly  revealed,  then  every 
false  judgment  will  be  also  revealed.  We  might  object  that  there  does 
not  seem  to  be  any  reason  why  there  should  be  any  such  false  judgments 
which  would  have  to  expose  themselves  thus,  if  we  remain  quiet  while 
this  universal  reveals  itself.  We  also  might  object  that  this  systematic 
whole  which  is  Bosanquet’s  only  test  of  truth  is  so  clumsy  and  unwieldy 
that  we  cannot  see  how  inclusion  in  it  can  ever  be  any  practical  test  of 
truth  for  us.  But  Bosanquet’s  answer  is  that  any  process  which  tries 
to  break  up  this  whole  and  deal  with  it  in  pieces  small  enough  for  us  to 
handle,  necessarily  condemns  to  us  fragmentary  and  partial  and  incom¬ 
plete  reality. 

This  is  Bosanquet’s  great  objection  to  the  hypothesis — that  it  leaves 
out  so  much  of  Reality,  that  it  concerns  only  one  very  limited  aspect  of 
a  question,  deals  with  only  one  very  incomplete  set  of  relations  between 
phenomena.  All  the  other  rich  and  varied  connections  of  this  particular 
class  of  phenomena,  those  threads  which  unite  it  to  all  the  rest  of  the 
universe,  are  ignored,  and  the  attention  is  narrowed  to  one  infinitesimal 
fraction  of  the  subject,  instead  of  seeing  it  in  its  completeness  and 
totality.  If  you  make  a  hypothesis  about  the  length  of  time  an  animal 
remains  a  larva,  experiment  with  specimens  to  determine  this,  and  come 
to  some  conclusion,  what  a  poor,  fragmentary  view  you  have  even  of 
that  insignificant  animal,  since  you  have  neglected  its  adult  life,  its  food, 
its  environment,  in  fact  everything  except  this  poor,  paltry  fact.  How 
can  such  a  fragmentary  procedure  ever  give  you  truth,  since  that  consists 
in  an  inspection  of  the  whole?  How  can  this  limited,  partial  process 
claim  to  have  any  place  in  that  truth  which  is  whole  and  complete  ? 

Now  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  with  these  conceptions  of  inference, 
of  knowledge,  and  of  truth,  induction  and  procedure  by  hypothesis  must 

1  Logic ,  II,  247. 


LOGICIANS  OF  THOUGHT  BY  STRICT  NECESSITY 


39 


be  regarded  as  unimportant  accidents,  as  limited  and  incomplete  mutila¬ 
tions  of  the  truth,  as  merely  accidental  instruments  for  the  discovery  of 
truth.  But  there  are  certain  inherent  difficulties  in  these  conceptions 
of  inference,  knowledge,  and  truth,  which  makes  it  extremely  doubtful 
that  they  can  be  maintained  in  an  adequate  account  of  thought. 

In  the  first  place,  Bosanquet’s  conception  of  perfect  inference  applies 
only  to  knowledge  that  has  been  gained,  not  in  the  least  to  the  process 
by  which  that  knowledge  was  gained,  or  by  which  new  knowledge  may 
be  obtained.  He  holds  that  inference  must  proceed  from  insight  into 
a  system  which  is  so  completely  known  that  the  function  of  each  particular 
within  it  is  known,  and  it  is  therefore  possible  to  “ infer”  the  nature  of 
the  particular  from  the  part  which  it  plays  in  the  whole.  Now  when 
the  whole  is  known  in  this  way,  there  is  surely  no  work  left  for  thought 
to  do,  there  is  nothing  left  to  infer  or  think  about,  there  is  room  only  for 
contemplation  of  this  complete  system.  So  this  conception  of  inference 
cannot  give  an  adequate  account  of  thought  in  a  world  where  all  the 
thinking  is  not  yet  done,  where  there  are  still  problems  to  be  solved  and 
truths  to  be  discovered.  Looked  at  as  a  thing  achieved,  already  known, 
completed  and  done,  thought  has  no  need  of  hypotheses  and  induction. 
Bosanquet  is  perfectly  right  in  saying  that  if  you  completely  know  a 
thing  the  way  in  which  you  found  it  out  is  unimportant;  and  if  we  had 
complete  knowledge  of  everything  our  logics  might  well  discard  hypoth¬ 
eses  and  induction  as  useless  and  accidental — but  it  rather  seems  that  they 
might  also  discard  discursive  thought  and  mediate  knowledge  as  useless 
and  accidental.  The  point  is  that  our  world  is  not  of  this  kind.  We 
still  need  to  investigate,  discover,  and  solve  problems,  and  therefore  a 
logic  which  discards  hypotheses  and  induction  is  not  applicable  to  our 
kind  of  a  world. 

It  is  characteristic  of  his  interest  in  knowledge  as  complete  and 
forming  a  system,  rather  than  in  the  process  of  acquiring  knowledge, 
that  Bosanquet  makes  no  distinction  between  an  inference  which  contains 
some  novelty  and  one  which  does  not.  He  considers  an  inference  to  be 
the  contemplation  of  the  relation  of  parts  to  each  other  and  to  the  whole, 
which  is  necessary  if  these  parts  are  to  perform  their  function  in  that 
whole.  Now  we  can  ordinarily  discover  this  relation  but  once,  but  we 
can  contemplate  it  forever.  So,  since  inference  is  for  him  a  contemplative 
and  not  a  discovering  process,  it  can  continue  indefinitely.  For  this 
reason  he  can  say: 

And  if  we  live  fifty  years  and  see  the  machine  every  day,  understanding  it 
thoroughly,  still  the  use  of  any  one  of  its  parts,  considered  as  necessitated  by 
the  nature  of  any  other  actual  part  or  set  of  parts  combined  with  the  working 


40 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


of  the  whole  machine,  remains  to  us  an  inference  and  never  becomes  a  mere 
fact.  Thus  novelty  or  discovery  is  an  accident  of  Inference.1 

The  difficulty  with  this  is  that  we  cannot,  as  he  implies  we  can, 
continue  to  think  of  that  wheel  with  its  necessary  connections  with  the 
rest  of  the  machine,  unless  there  is  some  element  of  novelty  to  furnish 
a  reason  for  thinking  of  it.  After  we  have  learned  to  understand  the 
machine  and  the  relation  of  its  parts  we  cease  to  think  of  it  at  all,  we  do 
not  even  look  at  its  different  parts,  until  some  necessity  of  mending 
or  improving  it,  some  social  interest  in  explaining  it  to  another,  or  some 
theoretical  interest  in  getting  our  ideas  about  it  into  more  manageable 
shape,  calls  it  to  our  attention.  So  there  must  be  some  element  of  novelty 
in  inference,  for  if  there  were  not  some  new  need  of  thinking  about  that 
whole  and  the  necessary  connections  of  its  parts,  we  simply  should  not 
attend  to  it  at  all,  and  so  should  not  infer. 

Bosanquet’s  account  of  knowledge  and  inference  is  adequate  only 
as  an  account  of  summarizing  the  results  of  investigation,  of  dealing 
with  the  conclusions  of  thinking.  It  is  true  that  in  such  a  summary 
hypotheses  and  induction  have  no  real  place;  they  are  merely  digressions 
from  the  main  point,  which  is  to  display  the  necessary  connections  of 
the  particulars  without  reference  to  their  mode  of  discovery.  For 
example,  if  a  certain  fact  concerning  the  adult  life  of  frogs  were  discovered 
through  an  analogy  suggested  while  working  with  tadpoles,  the  scientist 
would,  nevertheless,  in  writing  a  life-history  of  the  frog,  put  this  fact  in 
the  section  dealing  with  the  adult  life  of  the  frog,  rather  than  in  the  place 
where  it  was  first  suggested.  He  might  quite  properly  ignore  as  entirely 
accidental  and  unimportant  the  method  of  this  discovery.  But  if  he 
were  not  writing  a  life-history  of  the  frog,  but  were  giving  an  account 
of  his  scientific  procedure  in  investigation,  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  ignore 
this  method  by  which  the  given  fact  was  first  suggested.  It  is  because 
Bosanquet  is  claiming  to  give  an  account  of  all  thought,  not  just  a 
summary  of  the  conclusions,  that  it  is  a  mistake  for  him  to  exclude  as 
unnecessary  and  accidental  the  methods  by  which  these  conclusions  are 
reached. 

Another  objection  to  Bosanquet’s  position  that  real  inference  begins 
only  when  the  concrete  systematic  whole  and  the  necessary  relations  of 
its  parts  are  known,  and  when  insight  into  this  whole  enables  us  to  infer 
certain  things  which  must  be  true  about  these  parts  if  they  are  to  perform 
their  function  in  that  whole,  is  that  it  fails  to  provide  any  method  for 
extending  an  incomplete  conception  of  that  system  or  for  correcting  a 

1  Logic ,  II,  8. 


LOGICIANS  OF  THOUGHT  BY  STRICT  NECESSITY 


41 


false  conception  of  it.  For  if  our  idea  of  this  whole  is  incomplete  or 
false,  no  inferences  can  modify  that  idea  because  they  depend  upon  it, 
and  are  conditioned  by  it.  Therefore,  if  our  idea  of  this  whole  is  to  be 
modified,  our  deductions  from  its  nature  must  be  compared  with  our 
experiments  and  observations  to  see  whether  they  support  or  contradict 
these  deductions.  This  is  another  reason  for  holding  that,  until  our 
knowledge  is  absolutely  perfect  and  complete,  inference  cannot  be 
independent  of  these  processes  which  Bosanquet  calls  mere  accidents 
of  inference. 

Lastly,  Bosanquet’s  conception  of  knowledge  and  truth  as  that 
which  is  whole,  complete,  and  without  limitation  is  one  which  would 
make  it  impossible  for  us  ever  to  know  any  truth.  He  points  out  that 
all  our  experimental  and  inductive  inquiries  are  limited  and  partial, 
concern  only  a  poor  fragment  of  the  universe,  and  can  never  give  us 
that  truth  which  consists  in  a  view  of  the  complete  whole.  Therefore, 
he  asserts  that  we  can  never  obtain  truth  by  this  process  of  limiting  our 
attention,  dissecting  our  objects,  dealing  with  paltry  fragments  of  reality. 
It  would  be  much  better  for  us  to  observe  quietly  and  refrain  from 
disturbing  the  process,  while  the  universal  reproduces  itself  in  systematic 
fashion,  and  then  there  will  appear  complete  truth.  Still,  even  if  there 
were  a  choice  between  these  two  methods  of  obtaining  knowledge  some 
of  us  would  prefer  to  work  and  modify  conditions  and  find  out  one  very 
small  fact  which  gave  us  some  slight  power  of  working  with  our  environ¬ 
ment  rather  than  to  watch  the  whole  universe  unroll  itself  before  our 
wondering  eyes.  For  example  Lessing  has  imagined  himself  given  by 
God  his  choice  between  complete  truth  and  power  to  search  for  truth  and 
has  declared  that  he  would  choose  the  power  to  search  for  truth.  But 
in  sober  fact  we  do  not  have  this  choice.  The  only  choice  we  have  is 
between  the  partial  knowledge  which  we  must  work  for  actively,  and  no 
knowledge  at  all. 

As  Poincare  says : 

When  a  zoologist  dissects  an  animal  certainly  he  alters  it.  Yes,  in  dissecting 
it,  he  condemns  himself  to  never  know  all  of  it;  but  in  not  dissecting  it,  he 
would  condemn  himself  to  never  know  anything  of  it,  and  consequently  to 
never  see  anything  of  it.1 

Such  passages  are  surely  enough  to  show  that  the  conceptions  of 
inference,  knowledge,  and  truth,  which  force  Bosanquet  to  reject  induc¬ 
tion  and  procedure  by  hypothesis  as  accidents  of  inference,  belonging 
only  to  the  process  of  discovery  and  playing  no  part  in  true  knowledge, 

1  The  Foundations  of  Science ,  p.  322. 


42 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


are  conceptions  which  make  an  adequate  account  of  thought  impossible, 
because  they  limit  it  to  a  summary  of  the  conclusions  of  thought,  with 
no  reliable  method  for  obtaining,  for  modifying,  or  for  correcting  those 
conclusions,  and  because  they  make  any  true  knowledge  impossible  for 
us  to  obtain,  since  our  scope  of  attention  cannot  be  unlimited. 

I 

Holt  is  even  stronger  than  the  idealists  just  discussed  in  his  contempt 
for  the  hypothesis,  for  he  not  only  asserts  that  completely  logical  thought 
cannot  proceed  by  hypothesis,  but  also  that  science  does  not  need 
hypotheses,  that  “the  scientific  world  today  works  very  little  with 
hypotheses”1  and  that  the  conscientious  scientist  constructs  nothing, 
but  seeks  “to  efface  his  personal  will,  and  if  it  were  possible  he  would 
transcend  the  limitations  of  his  sense  organs,  so  as  to  be  an  impartial 
witness  of  the  events.”2  Holt  supports  these  contentions  by  statements 
from  Newton,  Ampere,  Kirchhoff,  and  Hertz,  showing  their  distrust  in 
the  hypothesis.  But  these  very  statements  show  clearly  that  these 
scientists  had  been  taught  to  think  of  hypotheses  as  mere  fancies  and 
fictions  of  a  wholly  subjective  “mind”  and  naturally  rejected  them, 
whereas  in  practice  they  did  make  use  of  the  true  hypothetical  method. 

Holt  himself  admits  that  Newton  used  hypotheses,  although  quoting 
his  assertion,  Hypotheses  non  jingo,  in  support  of  his  position.3  Ampere’s 
statement  is  this: 

The  principal  advantage  of  formulas  which  are  obtained  as  the  direct 
result  of  observations  numerous  enough  to  be  incontestable  is  that  they  are 
independent  of  all  hypotheses,  whether  of  such  hypotheses  as  the  discoverers 
of  the  formulas  may  have  employed  in  the  course  of  their  investigations,  or  of 
such  as  may  later  come  to  be  in  vogue.4 

Now  this  quotation  specifically  states  that  the  discoverers  of  these 
formulas  “may  have  employed”  hypotheses  in  their  investigations,  and 
yet  it  is  brazenly  used  by  Holt  to  prove  that  science  has  nothing  to  do 
with  these  same  hypotheses.  Ampere’s  statement  truly  means  that 
the  formulas  which  are  obtained  by  hypothetical  procedure  need  to  be 
verified  by  their  agreement  with  “observations  numerous  enough  to  be 
incontestable.”  His  use  of  Hertz  as  a  denouncer  of  the  hypothesis  is 
even  more  unfortunate,  because  Hertz  gives  a  very  specific  account  of 
the  scientist’s  use  of  the  hypothesis,  saying: 

The  process  by  which  we  succeed  in  deducing  the  future  from  the  past, 

.  ...  is  always  this:  we  fashion  for  ourselves  mental  images  or  symbols  of  outer 

1  The  Concept  of  Consciousness ,  p.  129.  3  Ibid.,  p.  129. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  130.  4  Ibid. 


LOGICIANS  OF  THOUGHT  BY  STRICT  NECESSITY 


43 


objects . If  now  we  have  once  succeeded  in  constructing  out  of  our  total 

previous  experience  images  of  the  required  conformation,  we  can  in  a  little 
while  develop  from  them,  as  if  from  models,  the  same  consequences  which  will 
appear  in  the  outer  world  after  a  longer  time,  or  perhaps  only  after  our  own 
physical  interference.1 

Now  it  is  this  use  of  thought,  this  use  of  mental  symbols  and  images, 
which  Holt’s  theory  is  unable  to  account  for;  therefore,  he  asserts  that 
Hertz  was  mistaken  in  holding  that  these  are  constructed  by  the  mind ; 
and,  unjustly  enough,  quotes  another  statement  where  Hertz  rejects  hy¬ 
potheses  (by  which  he  doubtless  meant  purely  subjective  fancies),  to 
prove  that  he  could  not  have  been  right  here  in  holding  that  these 
mental  symbols  and  images  were  any  help  to  him  in  investigation. 

Surely  such  quotations  cannot  be  thought  to  prove  that  these 
scientists  had  no  need  of  hypotheses,  since  these  same  men  themselves  • 
stated  clearly  that  they  did  use  hypotheses;  they  can  only  prove  that 
after  they  had  been  taught  that  hypotheses  were  only  subjective  fancies 
and  guesses  they  did  assert  the  uselessness  of  hypotheses  as  so  defined. 

It  is  a  strange  proceeding  to  include  Holt  among  these  idealists, 
and  yet  in  this  matter  his  position  is  very  like  theirs.  His  main  motive 
in  excluding  hypotheses  is  exactly  the  same  as  theirs,  namely,  the  desire 
for  a  complete  and  finished  knowledge  system  from  which  all  particulars 
can  be  obtained.  Also  he  shares  their  conviction  that  this  can  be 
realized  only  by  a  strict  deductive  process,  and  shares,  too,  their  unwilling¬ 
ness  to  admit  the  value  of  selected  and  fragmentary  information  obtained 
by  hypotheses  and  inductions  because  such  piecemeal  contributions  can 
never  build  up  this  complete  system  of  truth.  He  also  shares  their  con¬ 
viction  that  the  act  of  thinking  is  entirely  subjective,  and  in  order  that 
he  may  free  logic  from  the  errors  of  this  act,  he  rejects  all  hypotheses  on 
the  ground  that  they  are  “  deliberately  added  to  the  facts,”  and  asserts 
that  the  individual  in  fact  constructs  nothing  in  science  or  logic,  but 
merely  looks  at  what  lies  before  him,  that  he  is,  as  Holt  himself  puts  it, 
“a  mere  impartial  witness  of  events.”  Now  in  all  this  Holt  fancies 
himself  very  different  from  the  idealists,  he  thinks  he  sees  their  errors, 
and  is  planning  to  escape  from  them.  But  he  is  following  them  closely 
in  his  conviction  of  the  subjectivity  and  error  of  the  finite  individual, 
and  in  the  necessity  for  a  complete  and  finished  system  which  unrolls 
itself  before  a  passive  spectator.  Therefore,  it  is  not  surprising  that  he 
should  fail  at  exactly  the  same  point  at  which  they  fail,  namely,  that  he 
cannot  make  his  account  of  thought  apply  to  the  discovery  of  any  truth, 


1  Ibid.,  pp.  124-25. 


44 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


but  only  to  the  systematization  of  knowledge  already  gained,  that  the 
only  way  he  can  work  his  complete  and  perfect  deductive  system  is  by 
beginning  at  the  point  where  all  the  discoveries  have  been  made,  where 
all  the  investigations  have  been  completed. 

The  examination  of  an  example  which  Holt  gives  in  proof  of  his  con¬ 
tention  that  all  coherent  thought  is  deductive  will  justify  the  assertion 
that  his  theory  applies  only  to  a  situation  where  everything  has  already 
been  discovered,  and  not  at  all  to  a  situation  where  something  is  being  in¬ 
vestigated.  He  takes  the  case  of  the  description  of  mollusc  shells.  He 
supposes  that  the  biologist  has  decided  to  describe  them  in  order  of  their 
size  and  points  out  that  this  “principle  of  order7’  determines  their 
arrangement  in  a  thoroughly  deductive  manner.  Once  it  is  adopted, 
the  place  of  each  shell  is  decided  by  strict  logical  necessity.  Of  course 
the  principle  cannot  determine  that  there  shall  be  a  shell  4  cm.  in  diam¬ 
eter,  but  it  can  determine  with  logical  necessity  that  if  there  is  such  a 
shell  it  must  be  placed  between  the  shell  which  is  5  cm.  in  diameter  and 
the  one  which  is  3.  This  is  just  as  true  for  the  man  who  classified  the 
shells  as  for  any  visitor;  neither  of  them  could  change  the  order  which 
deductively  unfolds  from  this  law  or  “principle  of  order,”  both  are  there¬ 
fore  mere  impartial  observers.1 

In  all  this  Holt  is  perfectly  correct.  After  a  principle  or  law  is 
adopted  it  does  order  the  facts  to  which  it  applies  with  strict  “deductive 
power” — only,  after  this  principle  or  law  is  adopted  deduction  is  mere 
mechanical  measuring  of  shells  and  arranging  them  in  the  way  decided 
upon.  It  is  hard  to  see  why  Holt  says  with  such  pompousness,  that 
when  once  you  decide  to  arrange  shells  in  the  order  of  their  size,  you  can 
“deduce”  with  inescapable  logical  necessity  the  place  of  each  and  every 
shell,  the  necessity  that  a  shell  4  cm.  in  diameter  must  come  between 
one  3  and  one  5  cm.  in  diameter,  since  this  is  absolutely  nothing  except 
a  full  statement  of  the  law  or  principle  you  have  adopted,  and  once  that 
principle  is  adopted  there  is  nothing  left  to  deduce.  If  Holt  had  wished  to 
talk  about  really  significant  thought  he  would  have  begun  before  the 
“principle  of  order”  was  adopted,  or  while  it  was  still  open  to  change. 

But  Holt  says  nothing  about  how  the  classifier  came  to  adopt  this 
principle  of  classification,  or  how  the  observer  can  discover  it,  and  thus 
he  ignores  one  very  important  fact,  namely,  that  the  classifier  could  not 
have  been  a  mere  impartial  spectator  when  he  decided  to  adopt  just  that 
“principle  of  order,”  nor  could  the  visitor  have  played  a  merely  passive 
role  while  discovering  it.  Yet  both  classifier  and  visitor  must  in  some 

"Holt,  The  Concept  of  Consciousness,  pp.  55-57. 


LOGICIANS  OF  THOUGHT  BY  STRICT  NECESSITY 


45 


way  obtain  this  “  principle  of  order,”  for  he  points  out  that  the  facts  will 
be  “  chaotic  and  unintelligible  unless  the  classifier  has  some  principle 
of  order,”  and  on  the  other  hand,  until  the  visitor  ascertains  this  principle, 
the  collection  will  be  mere  chaos  to  him,  and  “he  will  spend  his  time  quite 
as  wisely  in  scrutinizing  random  pebbles  on  the  beach.”  Yet  in  spite 
of  the  importance  of  these  “principles  of  order,”  their  origin  is  never 
once  investigated;  it  is  simply  taken  for  granted. 

In  truth  Holt’s  ideal  scientist  can  do  nothing  else  but  take  them  for 
granted  because  he  must  be  a  mere  impartial  witness  of  events,  effacing 
his  personal  will  and  even  trying  to  get  away  from  the  limitations  of 
his  own  sense  organs,  so  that  he  will  put  absolutely  nothing  of  his  own 
into  the  facts,  which  are  simply  to  be  reported  as  found.1  Now  if  this 
ideal  scientist  really  followed  such  a  program  he  would  have  to  set  forth 
all  his  observations  without  any  “principle  of  order,”  which  Holt  declares 
would  result  in  a  mere  chaos.  That  would  be  the  best  this  scientist 
could  offer.  Therefore,  Holt  cannot  discuss  the  origin  of  these  “prin¬ 
ciples  of  order”  because  mere  observation  can  never  give  them,  and  yet 
they  are  absolutely  necessary.  So  the  only  way  in  which  he  can  make 
it  appear  true  that  a  mere  impartial  spectator  can  discover  the  truths 
of  science  is  by  starting  at  the  place  where  the  laws  or  principles  have 
all  been  adopted,  that  is,  at  the  place  where  all  the  real  thinking  has 
been  done. 

Even  in  this  process  of  classification,  a  discussion  of  its  origin 
would  have  exposed  the  fact  that  an  active  mind  must  in  some  way  have 
chosen  that  “principle  of  order,”  although  a  passive  mind  might  very  well 
follow  it  out,  once  it  was  chosen.  Holt  would  have  objected  to  this, 
because  it  seems  to  him  that  to  admit  that  an  active  mind  could  select 
what  law  or  principle  to  use,  makes  that  principle  seem  arbitrary,  fanci¬ 
ful,  subjective.  It  seems  so  only  because  his  “mind,”  although  deduced 
from  neutral  entities,  is  the  same  sort  of  a  subjective,  shut-up-in-itself 
“mind”  which  Bosanquet  has  been  laboring  with. 

In  fact,  when  you  really  examine  these  “principles  of  order”  which 
he  so  carelessly  assumes,  you  see  that  they  are  actually  hypotheses, 
which  are  tentatively  adopted  to  classify  facts,  are  modified  and  changed 
when  applied  to  these  facts,  and  are  finally  accepted.  Only  when  thus 
accepted  are  they  mentioned  in  Holt’s  society.  The  same  theory  of  the 
subjective  act  of  mind  which  kept  Holt  from  associating  with  these 
“principles  of  order”  while  they  were  still  in  the  tentative  and  experi¬ 
mental  stage  makes  him  ignore  all  hypotheses.  Since  he  believes  that 

1  Ibid.,  p.  130. 


46 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


all  truth  must  be  discovered  by  merely  opening  your  eyes  and  looking 
at  it,  and  not  by  any  kind  of  investigation,  and  since  he  believes  that 
any  actual  active  use  of  the  mind  or  will  introduces  whims  and  fancies 
into  science,  he  must  get  along  without  any  use  of  the  hypothesis  at  all. 
In  this  he  is  perfectly  consistent.  He  foreswears  all  commerce  with  any 
variety  of  mental  construction,  and  draws  his  deductions  merely  from 
the  observed  facts.  To  do  this,  he  must  assume  that  the  facts  are  given 
without  question  or  ambiguity,  and  that  by  careful  scrutiny  of  them  you 
can  find  the  theory  which  lies  within  them.  Thus  he  says  of  the  laws 
which  scientists  are  seeking  that  they  can  be  observed  and  need  not  be 
constructed,  that  they  “are  not  hypothecated  or  constructed  ‘to  fit’ 
the  facts,  they  are  found  in  the  facts;  and  the  process  of  formulation  is 
not  one  of  construction,  but  of  abstraction,  of  analysis.” 

Now  when  I  assert  that  Holt’s  reason  for  insisting  that  there  is  no 
constructive  act  in  investigation,  for  rejecting  hypotheses,  and  for 
refusing  to  discuss  the  origin  of  his  “principles  of  order”  is  that  he 
considers  the  act  of  construction  entirely  psychic  and  subjective,  I  am 
aware  that  he  could  well  protect  himself  from  this  charge  by  pointing 
to  his  conception  of  consciousness,  which  certainly  emphasizes  the 
responsiveness  and  activity  of  consciousness.  There  Holt  defines  con¬ 
sciousness  as  that  cross-section  of  the  world  which  is  made  up  of  the 
responses  of  a  creature  with  a  nervous  organism  to  the  environment. 
Surely  this  definition  could  not  be  accused  of  depicting  a  mind  which  is 
merely  a  passive  bystander,  for  this  mind  is  a  cross-section  of  actions 
and  responses;  it  certainly  does  not  exclude  the  act  of  thought,  for  it 
represents  the  mind  as  made  up  of  just  such  acts  of  thought. 

Nevertheless,  this  account  of  consciousness  cannot  protect  Holt 
from  this  criticism  of  his  theory  of  knowledge,  since  he  does  not  and 
cannot  use  the  kind  of  consciousness  here  described  in  that  strictly 
deductive  process  by  which  he  claims  to  obtain  all  knowledge.  This 
conception  of  consciousness  as  a  collection  of  responses  does  not  in  any 
way  agree  with  the  view  that  all  one  needs  to  do  is  to  open  his  eyes  and 
stare  at  objects  and  he  will  necessarily  see  the  truth,  if  only  he  avoids 
those  wilful  whims  and  fancies  which  alone  introduce  error.  This 
account  of  consciousness  is  likewise  inconsistent  with  the  notion  that  the 
ideal  scientist  should  merely  watch  the  events  which  unroll  themselves 
before  him,  should  be  careful  not  to  put  anything  of  his  own  into  the  facts, 
should  try  to  efface  his  personal  will  and  even  to  get  away  from  the 
limits  of  his  own  sense  organs,  in  order  that  he  may  report  the  things 
before  him  exactly  as  they  are  found.  In  fact,  so  inconsistent  are  these 


LOGICIANS  OF  THOUGHT  BY  STRICT  NECESSITY 


47 


two  parts  of  Holt’s  theory,  that  if  his  ideal  scientist  were  completely 
successful  in  this  attempt,  he  would  have  no  consciousness  at  all,  according 
to  Holt’s  definition,  for  there  would  be  no  response  of  his  nervous  organism 
to  the  objects  before  him,  there  would  be  merely  those  objects  themselves. 
Therefore,  if  Holt  should  object  that  his  view  of  consciousness  as  a 
cross-section  of  the  responses  of  a  being  with  a  nervous  system  to  his 
environment  saves  him  from  the  charge  of  considering  the  mind  merely 
subjective  and  entirely  passive,  it  could  be  answered  that  the  conscious¬ 
ness  thus  defined  could  never  become  the  “mere  impartial  witness  of 
the  events”  which  the  rest  of  his  theory  demands. 

Holt  has  an  objection  to  all  thought,  which  is  like  Bosanquet’s 
objection  to  the  hypothesis  because  it  deals  with  only  a  few  meager 
aspects  of  truth,  and  which  originates  in  the  same  inadequate  view  of 
the  mind  and  thought.  Holt  claims  that  the  concepts  of  science  should 
correspond  with  the  objects,  and  “their  ‘ correspondence ’  with  this  or 
that  feature  of  the  universe  of  time  or  space  is  their  identity  therewith.” 
He  then  asks  the  very  pertinent  questions:  “Why  should  we  have 
these  necessarily  limited  concepts?  Why  should  we  ever  bother  to 
think  at  all?”  His  answer  to  these  questions  is  that  only  in  the  realm 
of  the  concepts  can  we  get  any  necessity,  only  by  framing  a  thought 
system  deductively  can  we  get  any  absolutely  necessary  laws.  Of  course 
we  cannot  be  sure  that  any  particular  facts  will  fit  into  the  system,  but 
that  makes  little  difference,  all  he  wants  is  so  to  define  his  system  that 
he  can  determine  just  what  particular  facts  could  go  into  each  class  if 
these  facts  should  appear.  So  thought  is  allowed  no  influence  on  par¬ 
ticular  facts,  but  is  limited  to  making  definitions  of  classes  which  can 
be  governed  by  absolutely  necessary  laws  because,  if  particulars  do  not 
meet  these  specifications,  then  they  are  not  admitted  into  the  defined 
classes.  The  reason  he  is  thus  content  with  merely  defining  classes  is 
that  he  has  shut  himself  up  to  the  kind  of  a  mind  and  the  kind  of  truth 
which  makes  any  investigation  or  manipulation  of  particular  facts 
impossible  and  so  the  construction  of  classes  is  the  only  exercise  possible. 
If  he  had  recognized  the  truth  which  Mill  knew  empirically,  although 
he  could  find  no  room  for  it  in  his  system,  that  we  rearrange  our  thoughts 
in  order  that  their  arrangements  may  suggest  rearrangements  of  things 
he  would  have  found  a  better  answer  to  his  question:  “When  we  have 
the  concrete  particulars,  why  seek  to  parallel  these  with  merely,  and 
always  partially,  corresponding  or  identical  abstract  entities  ?” 

He  would  then  have  realized  that  it  is  just  because  thought  does  not 
exactly  correspond  to  its  object,  because  it  can  abstract  from  the  whole 


48 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


and  deal  with  only  those  aspects  which  are  important  for  its  purpose 
that  it  is  of  use  to  us  in  dealing  with  objects. 

There  are,  to  be  sure,  wide  differences  in  the  accounts  of  thought 
given  by  the  logicians  here  grouped  together,  but  the  grouping  is  justified 
by  the  fact  that  the  main  interest  of  each  of  these  logicians  is  in  a  complete 
and  finished  system  of  thought,  and  that  they  all  consider  any  incomplete¬ 
ness  or  relativity  a  blot  upon  the  character  of  knowledge.  Naturally, 
then,  their  interest  had  to  be  in  the  finished  product  of  thought  and  its 
systematic  deductive  relationships,  not  in  the  method  by  which  this 
product  was  obtained.  For  such  an  all-inclusive  system  can  never  be 
obtained  by  hypotheses  which  are  necessarily  limited  and  specific,  by 
any  piecemeal  investigations,  or  collections  of  empirical  evidence;  such 
partial  undertakings  can  never  give  the  desired  necessity  and  complete¬ 
ness.  Some  of  these  logicians  make  a  separation  between  thought  and 
the  world,  and  some  of  them  declare  they  are  in  the  closest  connection, 
but  all  of  them  have  to  admit  that  the  thinking  of  finite  individuals  is 
always  partial  and  limited  and  can  never  give  the  kind  of  complete 
knowledge  they  desire.  Hence  they  all  have  to  exclude  the  activity  of 
the  individual  from  any  legitimate  knowing  process  and  to  rest  this 
process  upon  the  operation  of  some  categories,  the  reproduction  by  the 
universal  of  its  own  differences,  or  the  deductive  and  necessary  action 
of  certain  principles  of  order,  which  the  individual  merely  watches  and 
does  not  interfere  with.  All  offer  as  the  best  possible  proof  of  the  validity 
of  a  certain  process  the  fact  that  the  finite  individual  had  no  part  in  it. 
In  such  systems  hypotheses  cannot  possibly  have  any  place;  for  they 
are  always  limited  to  some  specific  phase  of  a  situation,  to  some  particular 
problem,  and  in  their  systems  limitations  are  signs  of  failure;  they  are 
always  held  tentatively  and  experimentally,  whereas  the  demand  of 
these  logicians  is  for  indubitable  necessity;  they  are  always  the  tools 
of  finite  individuals,  but  any  act  of  the  finite  individual  is  ruinous  to 
their  ideal  of  thought. 

If  any  of  these  logicians  had  succeeded  in  giving  a  truly  adequate 
account  of  the  thinking  which  is  actually  done  in  practical  and  in  scientific 
matters,  it  would  have  been  necessary  to  abandon  the  contention  that 
hypotheses  are  necessary  to  thought.  But  true  to  the  theory  here 
advanced  the  exclusion  of  the  hypothesis  involves  with  it  the  exclusion 
of  all  practical  and  scientific  thinking,  all  discovery,  and  all  investigation. 
From  the  category  of  causality  nothing  can  be  deduced  concerning  the 
cause  of  any  specific  phenomenon.  It  is  mockery  to  say  to  a  scientist 


LOGICIANS  OF  THOUGHT  BY  STRICT  NECESSITY 


49 


who  is  seeking  to  discover  whether  an  ion  is  simple  or  complex:  “ If  it  is 
consistent  with  the  whole  then  it  is  true,”  or  “Wait  until  the  concrete 
universal  reveals  that,  as  it  manifests  itself  in  its  own  differences,”  or 
even,  “You  can  trace  it  from  the  pattern  in  which  the  ultimate  elements 
form  themselves.”  This  is  not  to  blame  the  logicians  in  question  because 
they  do  not  solve  that  specific  problem,  or  any  other  specific  problem; 
such  solutions  belong  to  the  special  sciences.  But  it  does  blame  them 
for  giving  accounts  of  thought  which  have  no  place  for  any  type  of 
thinking  which  could  ever  make  any  attempt  to  solve  such  problems. 
It  does  blame  them  because  they  begin  their  accounts  of  thought  where 
the  system  of  reality  is  so  perfectly  known  that  the  function  of  each  part 
of  that  system  is  known  and  its  nature  can  be  deduced  from  that  function, 
where  all  experience  is  coming  to  the  mind  unambiguous  and  already 
shaped  to  fall  under  its  own  proper  category;  for  whenever  it  is  possible 
to  have  such  a  complete  system  embracing  all  particulars,  then  the  work 
of  thinking  is  already  done.  Such  thought  cannot  make  any  fruitful 
connections  with  things,  cannot  criticize  or  reconstruct  objects,  for  the 
very  simple  reason  that  before  any  such  thought  is  possible,  all  work  of 
this  kind  must  be  finished. 


CHAPTER  IV 
CONCLUSION 

On  the  positive  side,  then,  what  must  be  the  characteristics  of  a  logic 
which  can  find  a  place  for  hypotheses  ?  What  must  be  true  of  any  logic 
which  avoids  those  misconceptions  concerning  the  nature  of  thought 
which  make  it  impossible  to  give  an  adequate  account  of  our  ordinary 
experience  of  discovery  and  investigation  in  science  and  practical  affairs  ? 

In  the  first  place  a  logic  which  is  going  to  account  for  hypotheses 
must  maintain  the  closest  possible  connection  between  thought  and 
things.  A  hypothesis  is  at  the  outset  a  proposed  method  of  dealing 
with  conflicting  objects.  It  must  needs  be  held  tentatively  and  experi¬ 
mentally,  and  must  be  modified  in  the  course  of  the  solution  of  this  con¬ 
flict.  Otherwise  it  would  lose  all  its  value  as  a  means  of  dealing  with 
ambiguous  objects.  If  it  came  entirely  from  the  “mind,”  how  could  it 
help  in  any  way  to  deal  with  the  “facts”  ?  How  could  it  even  be  sure 
to  refer  to  these  “facts”?  If  it  came  entirely  from  the  “facts,”  what 
could  thinking  add  to  perception  ?  How  could  the  hypothesis  given  by 
the  facts  to  a  receptive  mind  be  different  from  the  facts  themselves  ? 

Such  a  connection  between  thought  and  things  is  not  only  necessary 
for  hypotheses  but  for  any  satisfactory  account  of  thought.  For  if  a 
complete  separation  is  made,  then  it  is  impossible  to  show  how  a  wholly 
subjective  thought  can  ever  have  anything  to  do  with  equally  objective 
things.  Therefore,  it  is  necessary  either  to  assert  that  the  thoughts 
made  up  by  the  mind  do  not  apply  except  by  accident  to  anything  in 
the  objective  world,  and  that  if  some  of  them  do  apply  by  accident  the 
mind  can  never  know  the  fact;  or  else  to  assert  that  in  spite  of  their  separa¬ 
tion,  some  external  force,  such  as  the  will  of  God,  the  uniformity  of  nature, 
or  the  action  of  the  concrete  universal,  insures  correspondence  between 
them.  The  trouble  with  the  first  way  out  of  this  difficulty  is  that  it 
lands  in  total  skepticism,  since  no  knowledge  can  ever  be  true  of  the 
objective  world;  and  the  trouble  with  the  latter  is  that  it  makes  errors 
and  mistakes  inexplicable,  since  all  thoughts  miraculously  correspond  to 
their  objects.  The  philosophers  we  have  discussed  tried  to  escape  this 
difficulty  by  the  contradictory  compromise  of  making  these  hypotheses 
and  mental  constructions  the  cause  of  error  and  mistake,  and  asserting 
that  they  have  no  correspondence  with  real  things;  and  on  the  other 


CONCLUSION 


5i 


hand,  by  making  those  sense  impressions,  simple  ideas,  absolutely  true 
representations  of  external  reality.  The  inconsistencies  of  this  compro¬ 
mise  have  appeared  in  the  detailed  study  of  the  logicians  treated  above, 
and  besides,  it  is  patently  contradictory  to  hold  that  the  falsity  of  all 
hypotheses  is  due  to  the  natural  depravity  of  the  human  mind,  and  at 
the  same  time  to  insist  that  the  truth  of  all  simple  ideas  is  due  to  the 
innate  perfection  of  that  same  human  mind. 

The  only  way  for  a  logical  system  to  avoid  these  difficulties  is  for  it 
to  start  with  the  “mind”  and  “things”  in  such  interconnection  that  their 
correspondence  will  not  have  to  be  either  a  miracle  which  could  never 
fail,  and  therefore  give  no  room  for  error,  or  an  impossibility  which  could 
give  no  room  for  true  knowledge.  There  are  many  logicians  who  claim 
that  this  is  an  unwarrantable  assumption,  since  it  takes  for  granted  the 
very  issue  in  discussion.  The  best  answer  to  this  objection  seems  to- 
be  that  without  this  assumption  no  account  of  knowledge  is  possible, 
and  that  it  seems  to  be  thoroughly  justified  by  experience.  For  our 
experience  never  shows  us  isolated  minds  going  around  thinking,  observ¬ 
ing,  contemplating,  entirely  without  connection  with  their  bodies,  their 
environments,  their  daily  tasks,  and  their  place  in  the  social  and  physical 
world. 

The  examination  of  some  simple  cases  of  everyday  thinking  will 
show  how  close  is  this  connection  between  thought  and  things,  between 
ideas  and  the  observations  made  by  the  senses.  Such  an  examination 
will  prove  conclusively  that  the  ordinary  problems  of  everyday  life  are 
not  solved  by  the  action  of  separate  “  things”  which  mechanically  register 
themselves  upon  an  isolated  “mind,”  but  by  an  intimate  interaction 
in  which  the  ideas  are  modified  by  the  observations  and  the  observations 
are  modified  by  the  ideas.  For  example,  if  you  go  out  in  the  morning 
and  find  all  of  your  tomato  vines  dead,  and  if  you  wish  very  much  to  know 
what  has  killed  them,  you  do  not  stand  and  stare  at  them  dumbly  as 
“a  mere  impartial  witness  of  the  events,”  nor  do  you  rush  about  collecting 
all  of  the  “objective  facts”  about  those  vines.  You  do  not  measure 
the  height  of  the  vines,  count  the  number  of  blossoms  on  each  one,  weigh 
the  tomatoes,  measure  each  leaf,  make  a  chemical  analysis  of  the  soil, 
and  investigate  all  worms  and  insects  found  on  or  near  the  vines,  and 
obtain  statistics  concerning  the  temperature  and  rainfall  in  the  past 
years  and  compare  them  with  other  years. 

Instead  of  this  elaborate  process,  you  probably  stand  and  look  at 
those  vines  a  few  moments,  think  of  things  you  know  about  tomato 
vines  and  cases  of  their  destruction  which  you  have  heard  about.  You 


52 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


may  remember  hearing  of  a  case  where  worms  destroyed  tomato  vines, 
or  you  may  see  a  worm  on  one  of  the  vines.  In  that  case  you  examine 
the  leaves  carefully  to  see  whether  some  of  them  have  been  eaten.  Or 
you  may  remember  that  it  was  cold  last  night  and  that  tomato  vines 
are  delicate  in  which  case  you  examine  the  leaves  also,  but  this  time  for 
signs  of  frost,  not  for  signs  of  worms.  Or  you  may  think  it  was  a  cut¬ 
worm,  in  which  case  you  will  ignore  the  leaves  and  examine  the  roots. 
My  point  is  that  in  no  case  are  you  merely  the  passive  receptor  of 
given  and  fixed  observations  or  “facts”  about  those  tomato  vines. 
In  every  case  you  hold  some  explanation  tentatively  and  experimentally, 
and  in  reference  to  that  explanation  you  consider  some  factors  and  ig¬ 
nore  others. 

Now  this  is  the  action  which  our  introspection  assures  us  actually 
takes  place  when  we  are  solving  commonplace,  everyday  problems,  and 
these  tentative  and  experimental  explanations  or  suggestions  which  guide 
our  selection  of  material  are  really  hypotheses.  Likewise  in  scientific 
investigation  even  a  casual  study  of  the  investigations  of  Pasteur  to 
discover  the  cause  of  anthrax  among  sheep,  or  of  Darwin  to  discover 
the  effects  of  cross-fertilization  and  self-fertilization  among  plants  would 
assure  any  reader  that  they  did  not  merely  open  their  eyes  and  look  at 
certain  fixed  and  given  “facts,”  that  they  did  not  passively  receive  a 
number  of  separate  and  external  observations,  but  that  from  the  very 
beginning  they  were  guided  by  some  theory  which  was  held  only  tenta¬ 
tively,  that  this  theory  guided  their  observations  and  experiments,  that 
when  this  theory  proved  inadequate  they  modified  it,  and  even  in  rare 
cases,  abandoned  it  entirely  and  sought  another,  but  that  they  never 
sought  to  collect  all  possible  facts  without  any  suggestion  at  all  concern¬ 
ing  a  theory  to  which  they  were  related,  and  that  they  never  merely 
stood  and  looked  at  the  phenomena  waiting  for  them  to  display  an 
answer  to  their  query. 

This  examination  of  concrete  cases  of  thinking  shows  quite  con¬ 
clusively  that  experience  cannot  be  split  into  subjective  mind  and  objec¬ 
tive  things,  but  that  both  are  interacting  freely  when  thought  is  going 
on.  Actual  cases  of  thinking  activity  do  not  reveal  wholly  external 
observations  mechanically  impressing  themselves  upon  a  separate  mind; 
they  show  instead  that  the  observations  made,  the  facts  noticed,  are 
selected  and  determined  by  the  ideas  entertained,  by  the  expected  solu¬ 
tion  of  the  problem,  by  the  tentative  hypothesis,  and  that,  on  the  other 
hand,  those  ideas  and  hypotheses  are  being  constantly  modified  by  the 
observations  which  are  made.  There  is  always  some  idea,  some  hypoth- 


CONCLUSION 


53 


esis  which  causes  the  thinker  to  attend  to  certain  factors  of  the  situation 
and  to  ignore  others,  and  this  idea  or  hypothesis  is  constantly  changed 
and  modified  as  a  result  of  the  phenomena  observed. 

When  we  say  that  we  must  have  hypotheses  to  work  with  in  our 
scientific  and  practical  thinking,  we  mean  that  we  must  have  some  con¬ 
tent  which  is  more  completely  under  our  control  than  material  things 
are,  which  can  be  more  easily  changed  and  manipulated,  so  that  the 
results  of  these  changes  and  manipulations  can  be  deduced,  until  some 
combination  is  found  whose  results  satisfy  the  demands  of  the  problem, 
and  then  these  changes  and  manipulations  are  made  in  the  actual  material 
things.  We  mean  that  you  cannot  actually  change  every  material 
circumstance  which  might  directly  or  indirectly  influence  those  tomato 
plants;  if  you  did,  it  would  take  many  centuries  to  solve  that  problem. 
Instead  of  this  you  can  hypothesize  these  changes,  deduce  their  conse¬ 
quences,  compare  these  consequences  with  the  actual  state  of  the  plants, 
perform  the  suggested  experiments,  and  thus  find  a  combination  which 
really  answers  your  inquiry.  We  mean  that  when  an  inventor  makes  a 
machine,  when  an  architect  draws  plans  for  a  house,  and  when  a  woman 
makes  over  a  dress  they  cannot  actually  try  every  combination  of  mate¬ 
rials  which  suggests  itself.  Instead  they  tentatively  adopt  one  sugges¬ 
tion,  develop  its  probable  consequences,  change  it  until  these  seem  satis¬ 
factory,  then  arrange  their  material  according  to  the  suggestion;  if  that 
does  not  satisfy  their  demands,  if  some  results  they  did  not  foresee  spoil 
the  application,  they  try  to  modify  the  suggestion  to  avoid  this  unfavor¬ 
able  result,  and  so  continue  until  a  satisfactory  suggestion  is  found. 
Then  they  arrange  their  materials,  their  rods,  and  beams,  and  cylinders, 
and  valves,  their  serges,  and  silks,  and  braid,  according  to  the  accepted 
suggestion.  All  of  which  shows  that  when  we  say  we  must  have  hypoth¬ 
eses,  we  mean  that  we  must  be  able  to  hold  some  suggestion  in  suspense 
as  an  idea,  to  develop  its  implications  and  deduce  its  results,  conduct 
experiments  which  will  show  and  test  those  results,  remold  it  according 
to  the  demands  of  these  experiments,  and  finally  apply  it  as  a  mode  of 
readjustment  to  that  situation  whose  problems  and  inconsistencies  first 
aroused  the  investigation. 

The  hypothesis  is  not  an  entity  or  an  existence,  but  rather  a  plan  of 
action.  It  is  not  a  fancy  or  a  mere  fiction  of  the  imagination,  but  some¬ 
thing  which  functions  to  get  us  out  of  inconsistency  and  trouble  in  an 
objective  world,  and  which  gets  its  application  and  its  test  of  validity 
in  that  same  objective  world,  but  which,  in  the  meantime,  for  the  sake 
of  efficiency  operates  as  a  thought,  as  an  idea.  By  using  hypotheses  to 


54 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


deal  with  suggested  readjustments  and  modifications  we  can  short-circuit 
the  process.  From  which  it  follows  that  hypotheses  are  necessary  to 
science  and  to  the  conduct  of  practical  affairs. 

If  we  can  once  succeed  in  recognizing  the  closeness  of  this  connec¬ 
tion  between  those  plans  of  action  or  ideas  which  make  us  notice  certain 
phenomena  and  ignore  others,  and  the  things  thus  noticed  which  immedi¬ 
ately  proceed  to  modify  and  alter  the  ideas  or  hypotheses,  we  shall  then 
cease  to  be  imposed  upon  by  a  logic  which  presents  to  us  wholly  sub¬ 
jective  hypotheses  which  can  be  tested  only  by  their  completeness  and 
consistency,  and  which  will  always  need  some  external  guaranty  to  explain 
how  they  can  be  connected  with  a  separate  external  world.  We  shall  then 
recognize  clearly  that  hypotheses  are  merely  ways  in  which  thinking 
beings  deal  with  other  beings,  when  other  ways  are  inadequate,  and  are 
therefore  no  more  “subjective”  than  are  the  thinking  beings  and  the 
other  beings.  Similarly  we  shall  not  be  imposed  upon  by  a  logic  which 
insists  that  things  all  by  themselves  give  knowledge,  because  we  shall 
know  that  knowledge  is  the  result  of  an  interaction  of  a  thinking  thing 
with  other  things;  moreover,  we  shall  know  that  the  thinking  thing  can¬ 
not  be  a  mere  sensitized  plate  upon  which  the  objective  world  registers 
its  facts.  We  are  sure  of  this  because  a  mere  sensitized  plate  could  never 
make  up  errors,  because  a  “mind”  which  merely  receives  can  never 
account  for  those  mistakes  which  always  exist  in  our  knowledge;  and 
also  because  the  meaningless  mass  of  undifferentiated  sensations,  the 
big,  blooming,  buzzing  confusions,  which  confront  us  in  those  rare 
moments  of  experience  when  we  feel  entirely  passive  from  weakness, 
lack  of  development,  shock,  or  some  other  unusual  situation,  are  not  at 
all  like  our  ordinary  knowing  processes. 

From  all  of  this  comes  the  conviction  that  only  a  logic  which  recog¬ 
nizes  the  fact  that  thought  is  a  function  of  thinking  organisms,  of  think¬ 
ing  things,  of  intellects  in  the  closest  connection  with  hands  and  feet, 
will  be  able  to  account  for  hypotheses  which  are  not  subjective  guesses 
or  donations  to  a  passive  mind  from  objective  things,  but  are  rather 
plans  which  arise  when  a  reflective  being  is  in  the  presence  of  other  beings 
and  finds  those  beings  ambiguous  so  that  he  is  unable  to  take  a  definite 
attitude  toward  them.  Then  begins  a  period  of  mutual  adjustment,  a 
modification  of  the  plan  because  of  certain  discoveries  concerning  the 
things,  a  reclassification  of  them,  their  rearrangement  in  experiment, 
their  modification  and  manipulation  because  of  the  demands  of  this 
plan  or  hypothesis,  an  interaction  between  fact  and  hypothesis  which  is 
found  in  all  science  and  in  all  practical  experience  and  which  no  logic 


CONCLUSION 


55 


can  possibly  account  for  without  postulating  the  closest  possible  inter¬ 
connection  between  thought  and  things. 

In  the  second  place,  any  logic  which  is  going  to  give  an  account  of 
thought  which  has  a  place  for  hypotheses  must  abandon  the  separation 
between  “  theoretical’ ’  and  “practical”  thinking.  It  must  recognize  the 
fact  that  we  think  in  order  that  we  may  take  a  definite  attitude  toward 
other  beings,  an  attitude  of  loving,  fearing,  fighting,  buying,  painting, 
praying,  making.  On  the  face  of  it  this  proposition  seems  so  plain  as  not 
to  need  any  emphasis,  for  we  know  that  in  our  ordinary  experience  we 
seek  to  find  out  why  the  bread  was  heavy  this  time  in  order  that  we  may 
make  it  light  next  time,  that  we  study  yellow  fever  for  the  sake  of  curing 
and  preventing  it,  that  we  study  law  in  order  to  plead  cases,  architecture 
in  order  to  plan  buildings,  and  dentistry  in  order  to  care  for  teeth.  But- 
there  are  many  logicians  who  feel  that  while  there  is  this  “practical” 
type  of  thinking,  there  is  also  a  higher  and  truer  type  of  thinking  that 
has  no  specific  end,  but  only  the  general  end  of  increase  in  wisdom,  that 
the  legitimate  logical  activity  will  not  be  directed  to  the  solution  of 
specific  problems,  but  to  that  growth  in  universal  wisdom  which  is  the 
individual's  true  destiny.  They  also  urge  the  contention  that  even  in 
practical  thinking  if  one  limits  the  purpose  of  his  thinking  too  narrowly 
he  defeats  his  own  end;  if  he  conducts  his  logical  activity  for  the  sake  of 
narrowly  conceived  practical  activity,  he  is  not  able  to  reap  the  full 
results  of  his  undertaking.  Thus  one  who  thinks  about  the  cause  of  this 
bread’s  heaviness  merely  for  the  sake  of  avoiding  that  particular  cause  of 
failure  will  perhaps  ignore  the  general  principles  of  bread-making  because 
they  have  nothing  to  do  with  this  special  failure  and  so  will  make  many 
other  mistakes  while  avoiding  that  particular  one.  If  physicians  had 
conceived  their  purposes  too  narrowly  they  might  easily  have  continued 
for  generations  to  treat  yellow  fever  and  have  ignored  as  utterly  unimpor¬ 
tant  the  habits  of  mosquitoes.  Instead  of  drawing  from  this  the  warrant¬ 
able  conclusion  that  knowledge  must  not  be  restricted  to  that  which  is 
immediately  applicable  to  action,  that  our  logical  processes  must  not  be 
narrowly  restricted  to  their  practical  application  to  one  particular 
perplexity,  but  should  conceive  their  problems  as  broadly  as  possible, 
they  draw  the  utterly  unwarrantable  conclusion  that  any  application  to 
practical  activity  is  an  illegitimate  restriction,  that  logical  process  should 
not  aim  at  any  particular  control  of  the  environment,  no  matter  how 
inclusive,  but  should  aim  first  at  that  increase  of  general  wisdom  which 
will  make  all  such  control  possible.  Seek  first  the  kingdom  of  universal 
truth  and  all  things  else  shall  be  added  unto  you.  This  is  to  demand 


56 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


that  thinking  shall  work  with  nothing  to  work  upon,  shall  exercise  the 
mind  for  the  sake  of  its  growth  in  wisdom,  but  shall  use  no  specific 
forms  of  exercise. 

Now  this  separation  of  thinking  from  other  activities  and  specific 
problems  of  any  sort  inevitably  makes  it  impossible  to  give  the  hypoth¬ 
esis  its  due.  For,  in  the  first  place,  hypotheses  are  necessarily  limited 
to  some  specific  purpose,  point  directly  to  some  particular  control  of  the 
environment.  This  purpose  and  control  may  be  very  inclusive;  they 
may  be  as  broad  as  the  study  of  gravity,  evolution,  or  the  conservation 
of  energy.  Nevertheless  they  will  be  specific,  they  will  apply  to  some 
particular  range  of  subject-matter;  no  one  could  ever  make  a  hypothesis 
concerning  increase  of  wisdom  in  general,  with  no  specific  limitations. 
In  the  second  place,  hypotheses  have  no  value  by  themselves,  but  must 
be  hitched  up  with  interests,  actions,  for  they  arise  only  when  there  is 
some  conflict  in  these.  Their  purpose  is  to  find  the  cause  of  that  con¬ 
flict  and  remove  it,  and  if  logical  activity  is  deprived  of  any  connection 
with  other  activities  then  it  can  have  no  ambiguities  or  difficulties  and, 
therefore,  no  need  of  hypotheses. 

It  follows  from  this  requirement  that  our  thinking  be  knit  up  with 
our  other  activities,  that  the  goal  of  thought  cannot  be  the  contemplation 
of  some  complete,  comprehensive,  finished  whole,  in  which  all  the  par¬ 
ticular  elements  find  their  places,  but  must  be  experimental.  Therefore, 
its  account  of  thought  must  not  begin  where  the  “principles  of  order” 
have  been  determined  upon,  where  the  system  and  the  function  of  each 
part  within  that  system  is  already  known,  where  the  categories  of  thought 
are  fixed,  and  where  nothing  remains  to  be  done  except  to  deduce  the 
results.  Instead  of  this  its  account  must  begin  where  the  experience 
cannot  be  complacently  accepted,  where  it  is  not  satisfactory  just  as  it 
is  given,  where  some  “principles  of  order”  have  to  be  determined,  where 
the  function  of  some  part  of  the  world  is  ambiguous,  is  equivocal,  where 
some  question  is  to  be  answered. 

It  also  follows  from  this  requirement  that  thinking  be  connected 
with  other  activities,  and  recognized  as  a  control  for  them,  that  the 
ideal  of  thought  must  be  the  solution  of  specific  problems,  not  the  con¬ 
templation  of  a  finished  system.  It  must  be  recognized  that  experience 
is  too  vast  to  be  dealt  with  wholesale,  and  that  the  problems  of  logic, 
like  Dewey’s  problems  of  morality,  must  be  viewed  as  retail  jobs.  It 
must  be  admitted  that  we  may  limit  our  inquiry  without  thereby  render¬ 
ing  our  results  false,  that  partial  knowledge  is  not,  therefore,  useless  and 
untrue.  This  must  be  recognized  because  the  very  nature  of  a  hypoth- 


CONCLUSION 


57 


esis  is  to  limit,  to  select,  to  direct  an  investigation  “to  one  thing  rather 
than  another,”  and  this  characteristic  of  a  hypothesis  is  necessary  if 
we  are  going  to  have  a  thought  which  can  discover  new  facts  and  not 
just  systematize  ones  already  known;  because  we  can  never  learn  all 
about  the  world,  all  at  once,  we  must  always  attack  one  question  at 
a  time. 

Last  of  all,  any  logic  which  is  going  to  give  an  adequate  account  of 
the  hypothesis  must  recognize  the  fact  that  immediate  experience  is 
ambiguous,  that  our  very  sensations  suggest  doubts  and  questions,  that 
there  are  conflicts  and  contradictions  in  the  stimuli  themselves.  For 
if  the  facts  were  unambiguously  given  to  the  mind,  there  would  be  no 
problem  of  knowledge  any  more  than  there  is  a  problem  of  vision.  Knowl¬ 
edge  would  have  to  arise  simply  by  the  contemplation  of  the  facts  as 
they  come,  and  any  hypotheses  about  them  would  have  to  be  either 
useless  mental  luxuries  or  positive  perversions  of  the  given  facts  and 
causes  of  error.  If  every  stimulus  our  organisms  could  receive  were 
absolutely  distinct  and  different  from  any  other  stimulus,  and  if  each 
of  these  stimuli  always  needed  exactly  the  same  reaction,  so  that  there 
could  never  be  any  ambiguities  or  conflicts,  then  there  would  never  be 
any  need  for  forming  hypotheses,  for  forming  ideal  explanations  of  what 
we  saw,  deducing  their  results,  and  subjecting  these  to  various  experi¬ 
ments.  But  in  the  world  of  our  experience,  one  stimulus  is  not  always 
easy  to  distinguish  from  another;  it  often  comes  as  an  equivocal  stimulus, 
whose  problematic  and  hypothetical  aspect  is  suggested  in  the  very 
moment  of  its  reception,  by  its  own  ambiguity.  Thus  if  facts  were 
unambiguously  given,  so  that  feeling  a  drop  of  water  hit  against  your 
face  always  meant  a  hard  rainstorm  coming,  that  sensation  would  be 
merely  received  and  recorded,  there  would  be  no  occasion  for  any  hypoth¬ 
esis  in  connection  with  its  reception  by  the  mind.  If  we  are  going  to 
have  hypotheses  then,  we  must  admit  that  all  stimuli  are  not  thus 
unambiguous,  that  sometimes  it  is  a  drop  of  rain  from  a  storm,  and  some¬ 
times  one  from  a  lawn  sprayer  placed  too  near  you.  Then  the  given 
sensation  will  be  hypothetical  in  its  very  reception,  will  itself  suggest 
the  question,  “Storm  or  lawn  sprayer?”;  the  hypothesis  will  not  be 
unwarrantably  lugged  in  from  the  outside  and  added  to  facts  which  have 
no  need  for  them,  but  the  facts  will  themselves  arouse  the  hypothesis 
because  they  are  questioned  facts.  Thus  we  shall  know  that  the  facts 
do  not  stand  off  on  one  side,  absolutely  complete  and  certain  and  pre¬ 
sented  in  that  neat  form  to  the  mind,  which  then  officiously  attaches 
some  hypothetical  fancy  of  its  own  to  them,  but  that  these  facts  come 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HYPOTHESIS  IN  LOGIC 


58 

before  the  mind  as  themselves  questionable,  ambiguous,  puzzling,  and 
simply  demand  some  kind  of  explanation  to  make  them  understandable. 

For  this  same  reason,  a  logic  which  is  to  consider  the  hypothesis  at 
all  legitimate  must  not  follow  the  anti-intellectualists  in  asserting  that 
unified  reality  is  given  in  immediate  experience  and  that  thought  is 
essentially  mutilative  and  disjunctive.  It  is  because  an  immediate 
experience  suggests  two  contradictory  lines  of  reaction,  because  we  do 
not  know  what  to  make  of  it,  because  it  splits  up  into  conflicting  stimuli 
to  action,  that  we  must  make  hypotheses  and  follow  out  their  deduced 
consequences,  to  determine  which  of  these  reactions  to  make,  to  cure 
this  disjunction  in  our  immediate  experience.  If  all  the  elements  of  my 
immediate  experience  with  those  tomato  vines  point  to  the  one  conclusion, 
they  were  killed  by  frost,  I  do  not  make  any  hypothesis,  I  do  not  go 
through  any  logical  procedure  whatsoever,  I  merely  say,  “They  were 
killed  by  the  frost.”  It  is  only  when  the  immediate  experience  gives  not 
a  unified  but  an  ambiguous  message,  when  some  signs  which  I  have  always 
considered  necessary  to  destruction  by  frost,  for  example,  blackened 
leaves  or  fall  in  temperature,  are  lacking,  or  when  other  signs  are  present 
also,  which  point  to  destruction  by  worms  or  rabbits,  that  I  follow  out 
these  rival  hypotheses,  and  seek  to  explain  these  contradictory  elements 
of  the  situation.  That  is  to  say,  the  immediate  experience  in  this  case 
comes  to  me  already  mutilated,  and  it  is  the  office  of  thought,  beginning 
with  one  or  more  hypotheses,  to  solve  the  ambiguity,  to  establish  one 
cause  and  do  away  with  the  contradictory  causes  suggested.  Also,  the 
cause  is  so  much  a  part  of  the  immediate  experience  with  which  I  start, 
that  this  experience  will  not  cease  to  be  ambiguous  until  the  cause  is 
determined.  Now  if  the  anti-intellectualists  were  right  in  saying  that 
immediate  experience  is  always  unified  until  thought  mutilates  it,  then 
there  would  never  be  any  ambiguous  situations  which  could  give  rise  to 
hypotheses,  and  they  would  vanish  immediately  from  human  minds  or 
rather  would  never  have  arisen  in  the  first  place.  The  only  other  possible 
theory  is  that  the  making  of  hypotheses  is  only  another  sign  of  innate 
human  depravity,  dragging  in  ambiguities  and  contradictions  into  a 
perfectly  unified  and  satisfactory  immediate  experience,  reading  problems 
into  a  situation  which  is  absolutely  clear  and  unequivocal.  Therefore 
it  is  necessary  for  a  logic  which  would  consider  hypotheses  legitimate 
at  all  to  admit  that  immediate  experience  contains  conflicts  and  problems. 


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GAYLORD 

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